Building Rock Piles

At the end of this school year, I noticed that I was feeling burned out. Normally priding myself on keeping a positive attitude and letting everything flow effortlessly, I was noticing the effects of stress, anxiety and discontent. So I practiced stress management at its finest; instead of diving into an intensive 20-credit summer term of anatomy and physiology classes, as I had planned, I decided to turn the intensity level down ... WAY down. I enrolled in natural dyeing and urban farm, letting the anatomy and physiology classes wait until fall and winter terms.

Summer break. The thought of having so much time to relax and rejuvenate is almost SCARY. Now that I have time to do all the things I love to do, without interruptions or boundaries, I think I might burst. I am a dandelion gone to seed, with all of my feathery tufts trembling in the wind. Will the wind will scatter the seeds willy-nilly into a state of chaos, or will a strong wind come and blow me toward one orderly destination?

I am SO not complaining. I love the opportunity to take a breather. I can allow myself to take a break after my consistent and emphatic performance in school, earning myself a 4.22 GPA for the year (I didn't know it was possible, to be honest). I know that the break won't last, and I almost have a responsibility to myself to enjoy EVERY moment... because before I know it, I'll be back to the rigor and vigor of school life, then work life, and just like life, time will fly and I'll be celebrating my 40th, 50th, 60th birthdays and thinking back on this time in my life when I had all the time in the world and no place to go.

But this equation - all-the-time-in-the-world plus no-place-to-go - gets my juices flowing. I'm fired up and ready to go. I'm working in the yard, planning my own business, preparing for three different careers. Half the time I don't know what to do with myself.

Oh, I can feel another analogy coming on! Normally I am a fire burning in a wood stove; keeping a house warm, boiling the water in the kettle. My energy is directed towards a few specific tasks, and while it is nice to do these things, it also makes me a little mournful of all the things I'm not able to do, the limitations of being a little fire in a wood stove. So now I am a wildfire. I can burn up everything in sight; yesterday a landscape architect, today an artist, tomorrow I'll clean out the file cabinets; but there's no direction. I can burn up a lot of things but when I'm done there's nothing to show but a pile of ash.

Okay, that was a stupid analogy; I certainly have more than a pile of ash to show for my productive spurting! Maybe instead I am building piles of rocks. Nobody is telling me where to build the piles, so I keep building them everywhere. I'm kinda fascinated by how each pile of rocks looks different and I'm making a million tiny little rock piles. But when I stop and survey my work, I want to see THE MOUNTAIN!

There is balance here. In seeking balance, I have lost it. The moment I ask the question "how can I fix this situation?" the situation begins to seem broken. As I release my fears, doubts, questions, things will relax back into a flow and I will see the greater picture. The point is not to build a mountain or to build many piles of rocks; the question of what I am supposed to be building is missing the point. The point is to enjoy the process of moving rocks. And I am enjoying it, very much.

Woah! That was deep. Or not. To keep things bright, I've included photos of one of today's many mini "rock piles", some filled in sketches. I saw the Indigo Girls on Friday night, and brought out my sketchbook to capture the moments. The first sketch is Amy Ray her self - one of the Indigo Girls - and the second is a woman who sat nearby in the crowd. I love people watching, and making 10-minute papparazi sketches of unsuspecting people is a great way to capture the spirit of the moment.