Rain
I have somewhat of a love-hate relationship with the rain. After truth about enzyte living in the North of France, where you notice more often when it is not raining than when it is, the sound of the drops hitting the pavement has become less romantic to me. I also experience a healthy amount of fear and anxiety when I happen to be driving (especially on a busy interstate road in the dark, like I was this evening) with the pouding of the water blurring my vision and loosening my traction...

...but then I come home, to my welcoming home, and sit, in my warm and inviting study, and open the door to let the voice of the thunder and the smell of the showers outside remind me of how lucky I am to sit where I sit. This is especially true when I had been sitting here, quietly cursing the extra work I had to finish before the end of the night and feeling just a little bit sorry for myself. Tonight, I will go to bed and be lulled by rain. Ahhhhh....
Posted by Maura at 8:20 PM 0 comments
Huge Weekend
This weekend was enormous. Not huge... enormous.

Friday night, we had a lovely Belgian dinner. After dinner, we went to the theater and caught a whole slew of friends (and made a new one) doing fine work. After the theater, we met up with two old friends I was able to introduce Maura to.

Saturday we took a great walk, did some grocery shopping, spent a bunch of quality time lounging in the sun and doing some wedding planning, then we drove to Baltimore for a lovely Passover dinner with the family.

Today, after a sweet morning at home, we headed out to do some registering for the wedding, then drove out to Mt. Airy, MD to see one of my oldest friends in the world... and to ask him to perform our wedding ceremony. (He said yes.) On the way home, we finally knocked an annoying errand off our to-do list.

Perhaps the most important event of the weekend, however, happened in the car this afternoon. While riding in the car, sitting beside Maura, I had my first ever bite in my entire life of... a banana.

Yes. I'm 39 years old and until today, I'd never eaten a banana.

I was scared of them. The smel turned my stomach. But you know what? It wasn't all that bad.

Now, I've still got a ways to go. I still think I'm far away from actually desiring a banana. But I got over the hump. I took a small bite, put in my mouth, chewed it up, and swallowed. And it wasn't at all terrible.

I'll keep trying. And that's what I'm grateful for -- that I'm open to new experiences, new flavors, new textures (nobody told me they were so MUSHY). I hope that no matter how old I get, I always keep my mind -- and my taste buds -- open like that. Don't you?
Posted by Gwydion at 6:57 PM 3 comments
Labels: bananas
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Confidence and the Lack Thereof
I'm generally a pretty confident person. When I walk into a meeting with a client at my day job, I'm relaxed, curious, inquisitive, eager to meet whomever I'm meeting, and generally pretty sure I can accomplish what I've set out to accomplish. When I enter a creative collaboration, too, I feel good and strong, able to communicate what I want, ask questions when I don't get something, put myself out there, listen to my collaborators, and pretty much just plain like myself.

But sometimes there are moments... and tonight I had one of those moments.

The details aren't important, not really. Suffice it to say that for about two minutes, I felt anxious, riddled with low self-esteem, confused, and not generally myself. It happens from time to time, of course -- to all of us, I realize -- and it passes, even if it sometimes lasts longer than we'd like it to last. But in recent years, I never really let myself get into such situations. I avoided them; I put myself in situations in which I was likely to be successful, to feel good about myself, to be without self-doubt. I was, quite simply, afraid.

So what I'm grateful for is that I've now entered a period of my life in which I'm able to feel those uncomfortable feelings. I think it means that I'm taking new risks, challenging myself, daring to open my heart more, to risk. And even though it makes me feel pretty awful -- and sometimes makes the people around me feel awful, too -- it's a good thing, in the long run. I'm sure I'm bound to learn from it... assuming I keep moving through it and examining it properly. Which, I am quite happy to say, I am eager to do.