Mindful Monday: Living Mindfulness, Walking the Walk, & the Polish Vacation

For the past three days, I’ve been heads down finishing my book, “Staying Grounded in the Middle of Chaos.” In the last 30 minutes, I sent the draft to the editor and reached back out to the cover designer to let him know that we are rounding third base and heading for home. I’m sitting here with my eyes closed typing, feeling into the good feeling of completion. Breathing in ‘yes’. Letting go on the exhale.

My boss calls this the “Polish Vacation.” That’s where you take PTO from your first job, to work on your second job. From Friday morning until this morning, I reread every poem I’d written over the last three years. I use poetry to process emotions. I stopped hiding that I write poetry and there are 75 poems and one Eulogy in the book. It gives me goosebumps to claim that I write poetry. I am a poet. Not in the Robert Frost, Walt Whitman, Maya Angelou way. My way is, well, my way.

Poems pop into my head, especially while I’m walking Oshie. I’ve started carrying my phone so I can capture the poems.  Whole poems download entirely in seconds. I actually start planning my Mindful walks, compartmentalizing so that I can face emotions while I walk.  I think, “oh that’s a good thing to feel when I walk.”  The Recognize, and Allow of R. A. I. N., a mindfulness technique. More to come on that in future blogs.

Yesterday, I get up from writing/editing/reviewing to take my 11am-Oshie’s got to go out-mindful walk. I start to feel the acute pain in my chest of the sorrow of Saturday. Two big events happened Saturday, one of which was saying good-by to Rolito again for the third time. We split amicably, yet again. But this is the very last time.

I think, why is it that the people I love the most hurt me the most. I breathe into the hurt in my chest. I hear my Mindfulness colleague Mairead say, “Can I allow it?” Yes. The pain feels spiky and red and yellow. I breathe into it. I walk. We reach the cat house. Oshie barks at the cats. Because she’s a dog and she really does dislike El Gato. We walk, I feel the pain ease up and a poem downloads. It’s called Excoriated Heart, because that’s what it feels like.

I recite it over and over; I forgot my phone. I run into the house and start writing it down. It’s good. It feels good. And in the middle of writing it, I hear the sound for a text from Roly. No kidding. He’s thinking of me. I’m thinking of him. It happens to me all the time.  He sends me all the pictures I asked for.  Just then another text-sound, before I can even download the poem on to paper it dings. Jo-ann’s, the fabric shop, I think.  Wait, I already saw the Jo-ann’s text.  It’s Discover Fraud Alert. My SS# is being used. The second painful event from Saturday, bleeds into Sunday, too. I deal with those enormous emotions on paper, too.

Suddenly it occurs to me, that I have successfully used my Mindfulness training to deal with the joy of finishing the book and the routine miscellaneous pain of life in a most productive way. I am Living my Mindfulness and Walking my Walk. Deep breath in. Blow it out. Have a Mindful Monday. And if you really need to finish something, try the Polish Vacation.