Frustration and refocusalization (my word!)

Oh!  I am so frustrated.  There are so many things that I want to do and I can't seem to concentrate on any one thing and just DO it.  

I am taking my self-portrait everyday, and the people in there spend a lot of time coming up with new ways to use various scripts and photo techniques and I am getting jealous!  So this morning I spent some time trying to work out what they were doing ... and discovered that I need to use the Firefox browser as opposed to my Safari browser in order to use certain scripts that people have come up with so that you can do certain things easily.  (Like when you respond to someone's comment, via use of this script a small picture of their icon will appear so that they know you are responding to them.)  It's very cool, seems easy, and I can't figure it out!  But that is mostly because I have never used Firefox so I have to get accustomed to that, and this being a Mac and all, I don't know how to apply extensions to applications!  AAAAAAAAAAAARGH.

So that is frustration number one.  Then my book ... it is not at a standstill, it is going all over the map!  I just re-wrote a pivotal scene and this morning I woke up thinking, no, that isn't going to work.  So do I return to the original scene?  I DON'T KNOW.

That is frustration number two.  Then today it is sunny and nice out.  My plan is to hike, but then again, should I be skiing?  But if I skied, then I wouldn't be able to tackle all these things that I want to do.  But ski season is on its way out (though it might last a few more months since we have all this snow!) and that makes me think, oh no!  I should ski.

And then there are piles of things I need to read everywhere.   

P I L E S!  Not to mention get back to work on my enlightenment.

Which by the way has all but ruined my life.  I know I said it before, but all this living in the moment is slowing me down!  I have way too much to do everyday to just stop and smell the damn flowers.  See, it's so much fun to be bitchy and pick on things, but nooooooooooooooooo, somehow I am supposed to be calm and all-knowing.  I find it irritating.  So, in retaliation I have been hpyer-critical and wallowing in the fact that I haven't felt all that good (a touch of the flu, perhaps?) and instead of smelling anything I have been curling up in the living room come 3:00 every afternoon and watching the tube. 

Has anyone seen Clockwork Orange before?  It's an old, old movie, 1971 vintage, and I had read (heaven only knows when I read it!) that it was a must-see film, and is still pertinent today.  I didn't hate it, I found it extremely disturbing and the thing that made me laugh was their interpretation of the future.  It was just sex and wild colors.  A high tech holder of music was a mini-cassette tape!  HAHAHA.  Not much imagination in the 70's if you ask me! 

CHILL OUT!

So I went on that hike with friends and it was lovely, and when we were walking by the river, I noticed this fabulous ice sculpture that I hadn't noticed yesterday.  And I had forgotten my camera!  On the drive home I couldn't get the picture of the ice formation out of my mind, so I ran home, grabbed my camera and drove back to the trail.  The dogs were beside themselves, so much so they kept coming up to me and gazing at me with their loving eyes!  (I'm not kidding!)

It was beautiful, but by the time I reached the ice, the sun had moved and it was no longer as spectacular.  Which is a huge lesson:  Enjoy the things in front of you, because you might not be able to capture them later.   I actually pondered this (and gave myself a little atta girl for taking pictures on the walk in where the sun had actually created more magic instead of being in a hurry to take this particular picture) and started to look around and enjoy my surroundings instead of being focused on one thing.  The dogs didn't know what to make of the whole deal -- they kept running ahead, but nope, I wouldn't follow.  They'd return, stare at me, I'd re-position myself for another picture, and they'd think, oh good!  She's coming.  But nope.   

Here are some of the pictures -- and when we first saw it, we identified the ice as looking as one thing, but now that I look at it more closely, I've decided it looks like teeth -- X-rays of teeth that is.

It is a little dull without the sun shining but you can see it's pretty awesome

 

The ice was actually fanned across a log across the river -- almost like a curtain.  It was sooooo coool.  

                               

                                                                                                                       

Anyway, while in the woods I tried the excercise where you are supposed to experience nature without any labels.  So you're supposed to be among the trees, but not think of them as trees.  Well .... my little thought machine kept saying, "well, if it's not a tree, then what is it?  Is the snow on the path, well, there is no snow or path therefore what is it?"  I could NOT abandon the thought process -- despite really trying.  I stared up at the sky and thought SKY!  I said to myself, NO, that is not a sky!  Then what is it?  It is nothing?  Well how can it be nothing?  GRRRRRRR.

  The only time I felt even a hint of a moment of grace was when I looked around to see what the woods held with no expectations.  So, you can't really consciously become unconscious of your surroundings -- it just has to happen.

So you can see how all these things are a little frustrating to an ultimate control freak!  But the walk itself chilled me out and I no longer feel as though I am a top spinning about unable to focus on any one thing.

Got this blog done, didn't I?  Whose counting that it's taken days since the last one and all day to do this one!

Ahhh, chill out.