Cellular Memory

Every night Abby goes for a walk.  Every other night, it is my turn to take her for her evening constitutional.  I always make her wait when we come back into the driveway until I unsnap her collar from the leash.  I get enjoyment from watching her bound up the steps into the house.  The other night I realized it is my middle-aged version of releasing the dogsled from the truck.

When I was young, my father and I raced dog teams.  We would hook the sled up to the bumper of the pick up truck and then put four to six dogs in harness and onto the lead and gang lines attached to the sled.  It was a loud and raucous and bursting with excitement and anticipation good time.  The dogs would leap and howl and shiver waiting for the moment when all that pent up energy would be unleashed. Usually, there was a plow comb where the town trucks stopped plowing the road and the trail began a few feet from where we launched the teams.  After all the dogs were ready to go, I would grasp the handle of the sled with one hand and reach down and unsnap the hardware on the line holding the sled, that was bouncing around and lurching forward with each lunge of the team, to the truck and swoosh-we were out of there like a shot. Within seconds I would be airborne on the sled going over the plow comb, hit the soft pack of the trail and the team would settle into their cadence.  We would glide into the woods, the cacaphony of the making ready falling away and replaced by the tamped down footfalls of the team, the slight sound of the runners on the snow and the breathing of the dogs.

What I would give for one of those afternoons with my dad and dogs again...everything was possible then.  

So for a brief moment a few nights a week I am 12 years old deep in the woods of upstate NY anticipating the ride even as I am watching and hoping my parent's geriatric Keeshound clears the steps into the house.

When you stop doing things for fun, you might as well be dead.  Long live fun and adventure.  Take more adventure days.

Just Out of Grasp

You know when you are searching for a word and it's just not coming to you?  You almost have it and poof ! it's gone. That is how I am feeling about creating the right livelihood I am looking for.  Perhaps it's just the contemplations are not quite the right fit, but there is something waiting to be manifested -I just know it.  Now if I could only manifest it.

Adventure may hurt you but monotony will kill you.

Life Guidelines

I was teaching an Ethical Wills class a few weeks ago and there was a block of time for individual writing in order to at least start the project (a journey of a thousand miles begins with one step).  I didn't want to appear disinterested in the material, so I too began to jot down some thoughts.  My intended audience was my 4 1/2 year old daughter, but could also easily be interpreted as a letter to myself (you can take that self-satisfied smirk off your face any time Dr. Freud).

• GET OUTSIDE-OFTEN
• TAKE MORE ADVENTURE DAYS
• CHOOSE FUN
• LIVE COMFORTABLY
• MONEY IS NOT BAD-USE IT!
• ALWAYS LEARN-EDUCATION IS POWER
• BE ENGAGED IN  YOUR WORLD AND LIFE
• DO NOT LET FEAR STOP YOU
• BE KIND TO ALL LIVING THINGS

Megalodon and Other Career Dreams.

In the past few weeks I have been exposed to a perfect storm of sorts.  I am reading Rachel Carson's The Sea Around Us, a 1952 classic scientific romance. The print is small and densely loaded on the yellowed pages that tear easily from the glued spine of the hand-sized paperback-and I LOVE it! During this time we went to H. E.'s family camp on the Union River in Trenton, Maine.  The Union is a tidal river and at low tide lies an amazing portal to an otherwise unseen marine world. An in situ touch tank of krill, anenomes, urchins, starfish, large crabs, and even squid! I'm sure there were other creatures who observed us even as we were blind to them.  This trip was followed by  Discovery Channel's "Shark Week".  The theme of which for me, distilled down to great photography /videography and Megalodon.

An assortment of images from these experiences, real and imagined creep into my mind's eye throughout the day and more than once have kept we awake at night, not in a nightmarish way, but with full -on curiosity and excitement.

Add to this some career/right-livelihood exploration and Viola...a long buried part of me has come a calling.  When I was growing up, I envisioned myself a scientist, a researcher...more specifically a palentologist and then a marine biologist.  It struck me this morning, for my 12 year old self, the perfect job would be a marine paleontologist! Starting with the Paleozoic era and Cambrian period.  Alas, I am no longer 12 years old, but reading Ms. Carson's poetic descriptions about the birth and trials of the oceans and seas on Earth and the evolution of life in these waters is, hopefully leading to a personal evolution and adaptation to a better, stronger, more physically, fiscally and worklife fit me.

Skills and Attributes

I performed a "baptism" recently.  My daughter, Maisie, was there and seemed to take it all in and we got to calling it  a "welcome to the world ceremony" for a baby.  Several hours later, while driving home from another family event. she started to hatch a plan about getting me in touch with families who have babies and may want to have my services for a "welcome to the world ceremony".  She suggested speaking to people we know to find out where they live and then to call others who have little babies to see if "they want Momma to come to their house to have a party and celebration".

Natural born community builder, marketer, and tele-marketer.  Please, Universe,  help her use it for good in her world and the world.

Ugh.

     One of the metaphors I use with my clients is the idea of change and growth being like waves or tornadoes.
     With the wave imagery, we often feel like we are at the beginning of a difficult time or experience/situation all over again.  However, like a wave that curls back on itself and then pushes forward with renewed momentum and strength,we really find ourselves not at the beginning, but much further along again.
    Similarly, the tornado swoops us up in all this energy and chaos, but over time we find ourselves higher up in the funnel with a new perspective.  As time goes on we continue to revisit certain issues, but always higher up (from the ground and chaos) and from a different angle.
     I never said it was easy or pleasant...especially when the wave is cresting or the funnel cloud is on the move.
     And so it is that I am revisiting the career/livelihood quandry-yet again.

(The Forrester Wave)