Highlights: Tuesday: Howes Your Coffee, with a Priest. A sleepless parent canceled appointments, and my day opened up. AAA reached out regarding Lauren's Mini Cooper being in a fender bender and the new owner fleeing the scene. Coffee Roasting. Backyard machinations, including picking up a table from CL that'll likely go to Howes and refilling the hummingbird feeders (after finding that powdered sugar did not dissolve and granules are the way to go). They are back and speaking to us again. Deep cleaning the BBQ. Time on the elliptical. A conflict with Tommy, seemingly needing to argue nuances, when I agreed to find a solution to his room temperature on hot days. Today, I checked the AC vent-fan in the front bedroom to find it not set properly and half-covered. I got it configured, tested, working, and ready for the next hot day. Further backyard cleaning and reorganization, including setting up a quick deploy couch cover to prevent rain and dew issues, successfully positioning the Adirondacks and the cantilever umbrella to ensure shading for the full day, and painting the firepit cover board. I helped mom via phone with a tech issue. Both days have seen a continuation of my ongoing effort to reduce tech's grip in exchange for reading or listening to a book that inspires or informs, or being fully present in whatever I'm doing. It's been a good shift.
Insights: Every once in a while, usually two-thirds of my way into a daily journal entry, as I did last night (twice), I wonder what the point is. Why do any of this? It can and occassionally does feel completely narcissistic and self-absorbed to carve out time each evening to recall and recount the various assorted crap that passed through my day. Someone told me once, it might have been Linda, that I used the word "I" way too much. I think it was her. I don't recall. I know I feel like I ... you get the point. I also think at times that this gets in the way of writing the more pressing stuff, the book or extended focused posts, and then I wonder if it's an avoidance technique disguised as the recounting of waking, feeding the dogs, and meditating. Which I do every fucking day, so... why's that special? Yet this journal, this blog, this daily musing, it's become a resource for recollection as to events like when I sold Lauren's mini, which was needed this week. As for the book.... It's already half here. Having journaled every high and low, every hope and hatred, from the earliest days of the unneceasarily contentious and soul sucking divorce to her diagnosis, the modecom of resolution and redemption, and the aftermath and lingering thoughts that still echo to this day. This journal isn't just about capturing daily experiences; it's about immersing in them, reinforcing them, and recognizing them all. I don't just say, 'I fought with Tommy' or 'had dinner with Jen'; I type out loud the things that resonate about each of the day's experiences. The struggles, fears, and challenges. The lessons, joys, and mostly, gratitude, just to be experiencing life. To be aware of the gift time is, these simple moments are, and the insights that I gain by pausing to notice it all.