new directions

It's been a while since I've posted here. Some of it was frustration at having so many things I wanted to do fall through. Some of it was business at work and at home. Some of it was pure laziness. And some of it was time spent working on a new plan. The good news is, with the possible exception of laziness, all of the other excuses have been resolved. Sometimes you need the rug pulled out from under you in order to get a new perspective. Thanks to that and some very synchronistic events, I am finally in the process of completely remaking my life, at least for the short term. Here's the plan:

- Take 6 months off work (leave of absence approved)
- Put possessions in storage, purge what I can
- Move to Santa Fe (I've got a great 6-month house/pet-sitting gig lined up)
- Attend Natalie Goldberg's year-long writing intensive (part one just finished)
- Write (do daily writing practice, finish my november novel and get to work on my next project)
- Get healthy (cook, exercise, sleep, breathe clean air, stay away from coyotes and centipedes)
- Reinvigorate my creativity (365 project, sewing, painting, etc.)
- Read good books
- Figure out what I want to do next with my life and where I might want to do it

I'm currently working out new daily routines to be put in place once I reach my destination (some time in late March) and will post that and more soon. Until then, enjoy a little taste of my soon-to-be sanctuary.

one more quick note on homes

this morning i found out that the second offer on the house was for more than i can afford, so this is not my house after all. i'm a little disappointed but not as much as i expected. i believe there are two reasons for this:

1. reorganizing my current living space has made it much more livable
2. as i wrote about yesterday, home is not a building, it's a feeling, and i am learning to disassociate that feeling from "place" and instead carry it inside of me

this does not mean i will stop looking. i do believe my house is still out there and we will find each other. i am in no real hurry, and i need to trust the universe.

so there we are -- closure for the two weeks focused on home as sanctuary. time to move on to the next topic and let the universe work its magic in the background.

the meaning of home

my apartment is clean, well, mostly, and completely rearranged. the dining alcove now holds my red chenille couch, my grandparents' coffee table and a shiny new imac. and in the living room, my books, my sewing machine, my desk and if it works, soon, my small dining room table and chairs. the tv is still here, but not for long. yes, i am getting in my dying media hours while i can. i will be donating the tv and dvd player to goodwill as soon as i can find someone to help me move them. the whole place feels more open and more suited to the life i want to be living. but that's not what i wanted to write about.

over the weekend i went back to look at the house. it's not a perfect house but it feels like the right house. it feels like my house.

i talked to the realtor for a long time. he told me about the house. he told me about the neighborhood. he told me about the history of the town. he told me about the fog festival and that the nearby cafe barbecues every summer weekend. and then he told me that the real yard for the house was two houses down and across the street -- the beach.

after i left i walked those two houses down to the ocean, out onto the pier between fisherman, then down the beach. people were flying kites, and having picnics. they said hello and met my eye as i walked by. it was like living in a small town. the kind where everybody knows your name. it felt like home.

a house is just a building. it's what you find inside -- the house, the neighborhood, the town -- that matters.

send me good thoughts. they decide on my offer tomorrow night.

floods wash the world clean

as i probably mentioned i had hoped to spend the long memorial day weekend getting my literal house in order -- cleaning, sorting, reorganizing, etc. unfortunately, due to the great water-heater flood, not only did i not get anything done (i spent the entire weekend staying with my parents), i actually lost major ground. items from the flood zone now rest willy-nilly throughout the drier areas of my apartment. and while furniture is mostly back in the right rooms, it still stands well clear of walls that need restorative patching and painting.

this has left me feeling extremely demoralized. as in week one where i got sick as soon as i turned my attention to health, having my home dismantled felt like a huge blow to my desired progress. but for some reason, today that feeling changed. i suddenly saw it as an opportunity, not just to make the current layout work, but to completely rethink how i use my space. should the dining room remain an office? maybe. or maybe it should become a craft room. or maybe even a dining room. the possibilities are endless. okay, maybe not endless, but you see where i'm going here.

meanwhile the house hunt continues. i've found a place i really like but am waffling. partly because it stretches my price (a lot) and partly because i fear commitment to another home -- the work, the cost, the permanence. which is silly, because the permanence is actually what i am longing for. at any rate, the plan is to see it one more time and make a decision. i don't want to lose another house because i waited too long.

setbacks, signs and tests

my plan for this long memorial day weekend was to make some serious progress on the current topic at hand. i had seen one house on wednesday and had another scheduled for viewing this morning, with a third to see on sunday. i also planned to get my current apartment cleaned, sorted and generally made more conducive to creativity and health. i woke up early this morning raring to go, jumped out of bed and into the swampiest carpet i'd ever laid foot on.

after some sleuthing, i figured out that my water heater had burst sometime during the night, flooding the storage closet that houses it, the entire patio and the interior of the apartment including the bedroom, laundry room, bathroom and part of the office.

the good news is this:
- caught it fast
- only the bedroom is carpeted
- my apartment maintenance people responded with amazing speed
- after weeks of rain, it is actually 80 degrees and sunny outside

the bad news is this:
- the bedroom had to be emptied of everything except the pictures on the walls
- it will take at least 24 hours for the carpets to be dried
- it may be a while before i can sleep in my own bed again
- i spent the morning moving furniture instead of visiting house number two

not only did i not get to do the things i wanted and needed to do, i lost serious ground. my living room and kitchen are so stuffed with the bedroom furniture, you can't even walk into them. in fact, my bedframe had to be put outside because there wasn't enough room.

i have been trying to be philosophical about it. after all, there's not much i can do. but two conflicting thoughts keep rearing their ugly little heads:
- clearly i need to move the hell out of this place
- if i owned the home i would have had to fix it myself

but it also made me think about some of the important things i'm looking for in my next place:
- a feeling of safety
- a measure of control over my environment, and by extension, my health
- space for creative expression
- manageable size but with plenty of room to move
- garden space (roots in dirt)
- light
- airflow
- warmth
- clear of mold and other allergens
- quiet
- amenities within walking distance (ideally groceries, library, yoga)
- clean air
- soothing

but speaking tactically, no carpets is key. and i will seriously consider an on-demand water heater wherever i wind up.

week nine: home as sanctuary

you know that old saying a man's home is his castle? well, for this woman, home is her sanctuary. or it should be anyway. but right now, it's definitely not. it's small, it's dark, it's crowded and thanks to my upstairs neighbor, it is often loud and smells like cigarettes. (you know you're getting old when the first thing you think about your bass-playing upstairs neighbor is "time to move" and not "wonder when his band's playing.")

at any rate, after years of living in over-priced, over-populated apartment complexes, i've decided it's time to give home ownership another shot.

i've actually been hunting for a while now. i started out looking in sonoma county, hoping to take advantage of the rock-bottom prices now and move there later, but realized i didn't want to have to pay rent and mortgage or become a landlord, so now i am looking closer to home. it will cost me probably double, but given how much i'm paying in rent right now, i may even come out ahead.

so this week (and probably next) i will:
- define and document what i want from a house (the "qualities" not the specifics)
- check out the local house and townhouse inventory
- find ways to make my current living situation more sanctuary-like (not sure how yet, but something will come to me)

double lucky for me, i have a long weekend coming up in which to get it rolling.

week six recap

some weeks there is just so much going on it's tough to keep up. sometimes it lasts more than a week. that's how it's been for me lately. the good news is, a lot of what's going on is good. or offers the possibility for good. i just haven't had time to report it.

what i do want to post today though is something that has become apparent over the last few weeks focused on meaningful work, and it's this: meaningful work is not a stand-alone thing. it's one component of an integrated life, and that's what i realize i've been struggling to find.

i have been living my life out of buckets: the health bucket, the creativity bucket, the writing bucket, the gardening bucket, the job bucket, the spirituality bucket, the daughter bucket, the girlfriend bucket... and never the twain shall meet.

in trying to identify what my "heart's desires" are, i realized i couldn't break them down into home, creativity, health, relationships, etc. because they are all intertwined.

trying to focus on creativity made me realize my home is not a place that allows space for that. trying to focus on my health made me realize without spirituality and creativity in my life, my health will continue to be missing important components.

so what is my heart's desire? a creative, healthy, productive, integrated life and a physical space and interpersonal connections to support it. and now i have a pretty good picture in my head of what that means. and i believe that it is possible to attain.

i also wanted to share this video from a great chiropractor/nutritionish and all-around health-improver about how to maintain a healthy weight.