kijiji

our first week home from vacation has been very full. it's got brendan and i wondering if this full schedule is effective at all. i dunno i think i need to make some changes starting next week.

when we were in meteora we visited some rock-top (i would say mountain-top, but they weren't quite mountains) monasteries. they were amazing. and as usual, when i see the slow-paced, intentional lives of monks, it get me reconsidering my own life. one thing that really inspired me this time was their industriousness. i think most of the time i forget that throughout history people have spent their lives doing daily chores and tasks rather than leisure activities. when i think of the monks, going about their daily routines slowly but productively, it strikes me as a very restful and fulfilling life. so i guess it's got me wondering where i'm going wrong. full schedule doesn't have to equal busy or stressful. it can equal fulfilling and enriching. i guess one difference between me and the monks is that they don't have to juggle a lot of things at once. they don't have people to see or unexpected requests to drive their moms to eye-doctor appointments or two activities taking place at the same time. i guess what it comes down to is that i want to my use of time to be more like the monks. restful and energizing. i suppose it's very typical of me to every so often go "hold the phone... somethings got to change". sadly i haven't found an effective coping method yet.

on monday some of my colleagues were asking about my vacation and i told them about the three places we went (athens, thessaloniki and meteora). the next day the one guy said to me "i bet you're missing the beaches of greece today, huh?". i was really puzzled because we didn't go to any beaches and i didn't say we went to beaches when debriefing to him the day before. when i corrected him, he said "oh, i must have just assumed you went to beaches" and i said "i guess we're just not that kind of vacationers". i guess he felt badly because he came by later to apologize. i don't think i was rude to him, it was just a misunderstanding. it was a very puzzling interaction that still makes me scratch my head a little.

i have some symptoms of a cold, which is really annoying because i just got over a bad cold 3 weeks ago. i'm trying my darnedest to fight it off. i even ate some raw garlic the other day (i'm lucky i didn't throw up afterwards. thankfully there was a jar of honey on the counter so i had a spoonful of that to cleanse my palette). brendan never gets sick, but is also having some cold symptoms. at least he can take some cold medication. i don't want to be sick again, so i'm refusing to let this get the better of me. i wonder what so-and-so feels when i have a big sneeze. that must be weird. although, it can't be that much more strange than living inside another person's body.

there's a weight that's pressing down.