july is bananas

This month I am getting geared up with meetings almost every day for my new job (see previous post). I am going to Puerto Rico for a friend's wedding. I am moving from Trenton to Princeton. I am conducting fundraisers for the Breast Cancer 3 Day (see pink logo).

So I am busy. But I realize that I do need to make time to write out my thoughts. I do need to process because otherwise my mind races. I have had a tough time sleeping lately. My thoughts will not quiet down enough for me to just relax. I feel flooded with information to remember (names/numbers to call/referrals/dates and times). The happiest I have felt in a while have been

a) when I was on vacation in NC with Jason. Everything seemed to slow down there enough for me to really breathe deeply.
b) when I am doing some physical activity where all my thoughts have to turn from anything heavy or stressful and focus on just breathing my way up a hill or pushing through one more mile.

I also have been thinking a lot about the past, and thinking about how NOT useful that is. :). It is a gift of God to be right in the moment, and I wonder how many simple moments I miss because of my anxiety. I have to stop treating times in the past where I was hurt, disappointed or screwed up like a pattern that will happen again at anytime. Crap MIGHT happen again at any time with any area of my life, and all I can control is the kind of person I am in response to all that. My energy is so wasted in trying to prevent any further hurt or disappointment that sometimes I realize that I am MISSING IT......missing life! Missing sleep. Missing love. Missing peace.

I think about Michael Jackson, strangely enough. His death drove home for me that it is not a blessing to be rich and famous (in his case the absolute most famous in the world). It seems like a burden too big for one person to carry. A small life is enough. A life that has people who know you, laugh with you, let you cry on their shoulder, let you help them once in a while. A life that gives you daily work that inspires you, moves you, and reminds you that you are useful in this world. Even in a small and daily way. Fame is aliennating. At least to me. One of my best friends in the world wants to be the next Oprah. I admire her confidence and her dreams. I find that I personally am as afraid of that kind of massive success as I am afraid of failure.

I am searching for a balance between hiding from a grand calling, running away from being a great person and then on the other end of the spectrum, becoming like Mike: isolated from so many people really knowing him; beloved by many, but understood by so few. Maybe I am just a simple person but I find it preferable to be understood over and above being honored and exalted. That's why the daily goals in my life are to make those around me, whomever I come into contact with, feel understood as well, to meet them right where they are and be with them there just for a little while.

Today was a big event called Project Homeless Connect and my organization got to be one of many, many agencies around Trenton providing free services and information there. I got to meet over a hundred women struggling with life and treat them like co-laborers in this life journey; give them a potpourri and an apple and a brochure and hopefully a connection to another person who is real and sees in them a real person too.