Holidays and Vacations

Joshua Tree National Park, a holiday and a vacation, why distinguish the two? In Canada we say "holiday" and in the USA we say "vacation". Maybe a holiday comes from "holy days" when the only time taken off of work was on special holy days. The same does not apply in the US, to vacate means to leave or to leave empty, which has a completely different connotation.

Most of my more recent holiday/vacations have taken me to familiar places, like skiing in local mountains or going to the beach. This time I went to the high desert and found incomparable beauty and a delicate balance of nature I don't notice in the more familiar places.

Being in a new location also allowed my mind to refresh itself spontaneously. Even though the bed and breakfast (http://www.roughleymanor.com/) had all of the amenities, I occupied myself with the autobiography of the woman who had built the house we were staying in. I found peace, and quiet, ready and able to head back to work and my regular life.

Make sure you too take time even for a short while to slow down and refresh your mind and body. You will be more able to handle the challenges of work and home if you do.

Planning

I aim is to have my work life and personal life be in harmony with each other. It seems that I only notice when that harmony is not there. By my assessment when a project or my life is moving along and meeting its' milestones, keeping within scope, it is being successful. I have noticed that it is during these times of relative harmony that it is easy to become distracted or "take my foot off the gas".

When a correction is needed I am all over it coming in like a hero to save the day. I have been exploring this tendency, and am pretty sure that it is a common default. What would it be like to study, work or play fully all the time instead of waiting for the proverbial "break"?

So I have been playing full out, studying, working and what has been missing is play. Funny, my play has become my work, and so it does not feel like play any more. As my interests become a part of my routine they no longer have what I consider the essentials of play. So I guess I stopped playing.

What would life be like of you could bring play into ever aspect? Would this bring harmony into focus for you? I'm not speaking about stirring things up or creating a "fun" disturbance; I'm talking about bringing joy, spontaneity and a sense of adventure to the details, the minutiae of life. So I'm going to take a bubble bath, find something fun to put into it, and enjoy myself. How are you going to bring fun back to your life?

Trapped and freed through inquiry

I was trapped by a question I did not know I had. Has this ever happened to you? Imagine a conversation with someone at work or in your personal life. You say something, they say something and something that they say or perhaps do, sticks with you or even on you. This happened to me. The way it happened was through an action, not words, but words did follow it. Then there was a cover up, and it left me puzzled for a long time.

What I wondered was who am I that someone would do this to and take this action? And then, who am I that someone would then lie about it? These were the questions that I did not know I had until recently. Discovering that these questions were imbedded in my mind gave me freedom to let them go. It is kind of like finding words or events stuck in amber, fossilized, never to be released except through great heat.

So how did I release the questions? Where did the heat come from? The inquiry provided the heat and I have a drive to understand which makes me a great researcher, communicator and consultant, but those skills and that drive trapped me in having to know/understand. Ultimately I did get to the bottom of this issue and am on the lookout for what else I am trapped by. What are you trapped by? What gets under your skin?