Weights a little lighter

My thanks to those of you who checked in with me after my last post. Krissy sent me this useful article. I do need to cut back on something of the voluntary things I do for others. Also, since the list on paper thing isn't quite working for me anymore, I'm going to try one of the online to-do and prioritization tools. I'm going to give toodledo.com a try. This is partly because I like the printable booklet they offer for your "hotlist." Of course, the things I like about it are available if I upgrade to Pro, but that is only $15.00 a year. I'll use it for a week or so, and if I like it, I will.

If any of you reading this decide to subscribe, please do so from this link, then I get a freebie for a few months.

There was another issue lurking underneath, and it did reveal itself. Here's what I said in email to Krissy the next day:

After I wrote that last night, this morning I woke up with a dream where I'm in my grandma's house. She's alive, but me, my mom, and mom's husband are taking care of her and we are also sorting through her things because she is also dead. My thought this morning was that I still need to do some grieving, so of course I'm over-emotional.

I also thought about her house being the center of my inner landscape. It has always remained pretty much the same in real life, and it has always been a place of refuge. Now the stuff is sorted and sold and the house is being sold, and maybe my foundation is being shaken in a way I didn't expect.

I feel better today, not so depressed.

I've been using tv to escape. I need to cut back and cut it out. It sucks time too.

That was Thursday. Since then I've felt less inclined to escape via TV, and my despondent mood has lifted. Friday morning I had another inner landscape dream...one of those places that re-occurs and grows and reflects my changing psyche. I dreamt I was at college, but unlike many past dreams in which the buildings have grown like a hive and I'm returning to school to continue my learning, it was more like I was there to collaborate with others, and I seem to recall there was something to do with a fundraising sale. The spiritual me was meeting up with the learning me, and some kind of shift happened. It was more like I was taking my place not as a learner, but as a do-er.

Speaking of the learning me, something that needs to go lower on the priority list are my continuing blogs on Pema Chodron's No Time to Lose. Teaching related to my despondency is certainly found in Chapter 7, and I knew so as I read it. G talks in the class about needing to find enthusiasm in the translation itself to make the work come alive. The one I am linking to, perhaps more scholarly, not so down-to-earth. She said, "Refusing to look at problems does not make them go away." That is just why I posted what I did. I hoped that if I voiced it, some answers would come, and that is what did happen. She went on to say that this refusal to look leads to despondency. "It is the very thing that makes things worse."

And I say the antidote to despondency is to look at it straight on, as I did with my spiraling emotions. A gentle questioning, "What is this?" allowed a door to open in that wall that was keeping me from acting and keeping me procrastinating. I will write more on this when I get back to the blogging on the book.

I feel loads lighter, and I was again able to have that questing mind, and look for ways in which I could handle all the tasks that I need to accomplish. The nice thing about toodledo, I can use Jott to send myself items to do. Toodledo provides helpful info on accomplishing projects and goals. One aspect of all this weighing on my mind is that there are so many little things I need to do. Worry about remembering them makes me anxious. Toodledo gives me permission to forget. If I send a message as I think of something, I can forget right away.