Shiny happy window sills

I feel like crap this morning. Physically. My stomach aches, my back is really tight and sore. I slept, which is a vast improvement to the night before. Two nights ago I was awake till about 4am. But, Sag was curled up next to me when I woke the first time at 3:30am and then I woke up a few times after that. Partly, no doubt, because my body didn't have the space it needed to move about comfortably in sleep.

I've been eating meat and cheese again. Unhitched from that wagon last week and I am noticing that when I eat these foods, I tend to not eat veggies and grains nearly as much as I would otherwise. My energy, my sleep, my digestion, have all been affected. I am bloated, mosquitoes love me again, I am more reactive to my allergy triggers, it's like the invisible ink that usually connects these dots is making itself visible.

Someone lobbed out a John Lennon quote yesterday on FB that has got me thinking. "A dream you dream you alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality."

My self-improvement work is so personal, and by its nature, "solo", that the reality has maintained quite a bit of dreaminess to it. As in, little fruition in the physical world. I still live in clutter, I still live in dust, I still live in much more chaos than I want.

For seven years, my time has been spent, almost exclusively, at home with my kids. I think their dreams have grown into realities over and over again. Which is what we want for them, and why we have chosen to live our life in the way that we do.

For me, it's been more of a challenge. When the kids were younger, my dreams were more fused with the reality of caring for them and so I was creating meaningful and functional realities for myself. But, these days, though they still need my care, I have been looking more inward questing for my dreams. Now that we, as a family, are more settled in a place, I've been able to build a community and base for myself to create a new kind of reality by dreaming my dreams with others.

As a stay-at-home unschooling parent of a family living more and more carefully on a single precious income, my time with others is limited. My kids are doing their own thing much of the time, my partner is working, most of the time on overdrive, which amounts to "doing his own thing much of the time", and so I have my self and my friends, at my disposal.

My time with Vinny has been fantastic, as you know if you read this blog with any regularity. He has turned out to be a great resource to dream together a new reality of health and healing for me.

Facebook has been a pleasant surprise. My interactions there, some with people who I haven't been around since I was a teenager, bring me dollops of reality that are dreamed together through mutual interests, senses of humor, and experiences.

My recent health issues, the pain in my ribs and subsequent x-ray scare, has set me back quite a bit. It feels like months of work have been undone, but I know that really, had I not been as healthy as I was when it happened, that I would have been much worse off now than I am.

The simple idea of how qi gong works is that the movements help your body create energy and store it up. Every moment that we live and breathe, we use energy. But, we can also be creating energy. When something stressful happens, we use more energy. If we aren't actively creating energy and storing it (banking it), then we ened up in a depleted state and worse, our bodies start to develop areas of stagnation and blockage which result in a deterioration of health.

This period of time has forced me to look deeper, to try to figure out why what seemed to be going so smoothly for awhile, came to a screeeching halt. And why it has been so hard for me to get back in the saddle. I am grateful to Cap and to the Universe, that I have been able to avoid a path of self-loathing and self-doubt while I ponder.

Yesterday, as I cleaned the window sills, something started to coalesce. Well, a number of things. Snippets and details, from various sources... I have an opportunity. Here and now. To push and move forward into the next part of my life where I have less crap, literally, in my space. With less crap, I can open more. Breathe more. Welcome a new type of serenity.

As I wiped the dirt and grime off the sills, one of the things I was reminded of is the very simple fact that with less stuff, it's easier to clean and keep things clean. It is obvious, but for a pair of packrats and stuff lovers, the urge to have our stuff around us, to remind us of our where we've been and who we are, has been important.

But, I am changing. I have a dream. A dream of living in simpler surroundings. Of having with me only what I need. My family, food to nourish us, some knitting, a good book, time with friends, and time to practice. It really is that simple.

So how to make this dream a reality? Those particular words of John Lennon make me think that since this dream, anyway, is such a personal one, that it's okay that it takes some time to pull into the real part of my world. No one else can do it for me, and, my partner doesn't have this particular version of the dream.

I think my "setback" was my body's way of reminding me of unfinished business. That there are things that I want that have yet to transform into my reality. Things right at my fingertips. A source of stagnation, an energy suck, that I can do something about. Now.

(This post is...rough :-) It's longer than I thought it was going to be and went in directions that make sense, but were unexpected. It's very draft-y. Thanks for reading.)