Speed and Slowness

I wanted to write a proposal for OSCON. Since it has been moved to San Jose I thought the best way to convince work to let me go again would be to be an invited speaker. I've talked about it since last year, giving a presentation either on change control or yoga. But the deadline is tomorrow and for the past couple of week's I've felt just entirely uninspired to come up with anything at all.

Tonight I feel burned out and exhausted. We went to have all the dissolution (divorce) paperwork reviewed and discovered we'd done such a good job it was pretty much ready to file, minus a couple of check boxes and final signatures. Suddenly the clerk was saying to us, "and you can go around the corner to the cashiers and pay the filing fee..."

There we were. So we shrugged and nodded, stepped over and paid to file all the paperwork. I'd been so stressed just going to have it reviewed, I figured there would be things missing and we'd have to take care of them first. In fact I hadn't listed the complete legal description of the house, but the clerk just had me phone over to the County Assessors office to get the information. Done. He commented on how quick this would be, the job we'd done was very thorough . I felt a little tight with shock at the unexpected speed.

Finally talked with my Mom some more today. Nothing but waiting -- she doesn't see the specialist at the eye institute until the 20th and won't see the Kaiser oncologist for her right lung until the beginning of March. I feel impatient for her to be seen, to have confirmation or perhaps the knowledge she doesn't have cancer (wild optimism).

It was a lousy day too. I am so keenly feeling the pressure from all of this already and today was yet another day that started with a panicked jolt at 5AM followed by dozing off for another two hours. I just don't feel like I'm resting, my brain is back to busy, anxious dreams so I wake up feeling just as tired as when I went to bed. On top of it I'm taken aback by both the quickness of something and slowness of others -- in quite the opposite arrangement than I'm comfortable with.

I am just going to give up the idea. I'm enjoying the ideas I'm sharing with someone from Dharma Rain Zen Center to offer teaching on yoga and meditation to the Portland tech community. I like the idea of it, but I think just letting it go this year is for the best for me. Maybe I'll work on something for the local conference and next year propose for OSCON, maybe there will even be a travel budget again by then.

JW told all of the teacher training students on Saturday that our homework this week was to do something nice for ourselves. She said it especially applied to me, that I am the worst of everyone. Practicing self-compassion is not my strong suit. The past several days have been an on-going reminder about it. Maybe letting go of some of the things I want to do, like submitting a proposal for OSCON, are part of practicing doing something for myself. Not sure JW would think it counts, but cutting myself some slack without judgement is so contrary for my usual behavior I feel how it counts.