8 months to an end

 

finally congratulations

As most of you know, I’ll be starting a new job on Monday, and I’ve been reflecting this past week on this whole last section of my life. Eight months… from graduation to job offer. I wonder if I would have wanted to know when I started out that it would be this long (or… this short, for all those out there still looking).

eight months: almost enough time to make a new life... (http://www.parentdish.com/)

I wonder how my experience would have been different if I’d known.  I sure wouldn’t have applied to all those silly jobs I didn’t get!  Actually, though, I think I can be grateful for the experience I got with job applications and interviews. I also think imagining myself in each of these potential jobs will help me appreciate the good things about the job I did get (i.e. I won’t have to make the (costly) commute to Boston, I won’t have to work in a fancy office where I have to dress up each day, I won’t have to do work that isn’t fulfilling, etc).  I even think that without things going the way they did, I might not have found as much need for the spiritual ideas I uncovered… I sometimes think I had to get sad before I could understand why and how to be happy.

If I could do it all over again, I would definitely have thrown myself into my photography business sooner. But, at least my family encouraged me to up the intensity while I was home at Christmas. I really needed that push, I think. I needed to hear that what I was doing was legitimate and worthwhile.

my very trusty camera.

Since I embraced it, I realized that I have been absolutely LOVING running my photography business. I love making sample albums, creating pricing/packages sheets, talking with clients, photographing babies, and editing photos. It has been so neat to have the time to throw myself into it all the way. I like the creative aspect of discovering how to market myself, and feeling like I really have a valuable and solid product, and helping folks attain really beautiful images of themselves.  I like the rush of the photo shoot, the first look at my images, and the art of taking a almost-boring photograph and making it about light, texture, and shadow.

album time

But, I also think I’ll be able to keep some of this enlivening creative business going while I do my 9-5. So… with that. I’ll be a Grassroots Campaign Organizer with Clean Water Action, working on the Producer Responsibility Campaign. The idea behind the campaign is trying to get the people who produce stuff to put less toxic ingredients into it, and to get them to do that by forcing them to take back what they made at the end of its life. This whole process requires legislation, and passing legislation requires public pressure. So to the best of my understanding, I’ll be working with community groups to get them to pressure lawmakers to craft and pass some strong Producer Responsibility legislation. More on that as I start the job and figure out just what’s happening!

My two new co-workers!

trying on meditation

I haven’t been blogging much lately, in part because I have so much to say about the spiritual ideas I’ve been exploring, and because they are still so new to me that it’s difficult to explain them concisely. Almost every time I happen upon a new idea, I want to share it with Kelsey, but as soon as I start to explain it, I realize I sound a like I have no idea what I’m talking about!

I think what I’ve got to do is keep reading and thinking about the new ideas I’ve happened upon, and talk about them little by little; i.e. tackle smaller concepts. So, today I thought I’d describe the type of meditation I’ve been exploring.

I was introduced to Metta meditation by Helen when she visited recently. My only other experience with meditation had also been with Helen, many years back, when we were visiting a meditation center in Vermont. It had been just the two of us in a small, silent room, and we had been trying to clear our minds… any thoughts that came into our heads, we would just release. This was terribly difficult for me. Also, to be honest, I got rather bored. Helen is a master meditator, so my endurance was nothing compared to hers.

Metta meditation, however, does not ask for this clearing of the mind. Instead, you spend your time sending out love and kindness (‘Metta’ means loving kindness) to someone. There are five stages of ‘difficulty’, so to speak, and you practice them in this order: first you send loving kindness to yourself, then to a benefactor, then to a friend, then to someone neutral, and then to someone with whom you have conflict.

You focus your mind on sending the loving kindness by picking a few phrases that help you focus good energy and happiness their way. Here are the ones suggested by the book I mentioned before (Loving-Kindness, by Sharon Salzberg), which I tend to amend only slightly.

“May I be free from fear.”

“May I have mental happiness.” (or, “May I be happy.”)

“May I have physical happiness.” (or, “May I be healthy.”)

“May I have ease of well-being” (or, “May I live in peace.”)

The self-focused meditation basically comes down to befriending yourself. And, to be honest, it’s almost impossible not to feel pretty happy by the time you’re done. I usually find myself smiling and feeling calm. And it’s nice, because it only has to be about 5 or 10 minutes, sitting however is comfortable, wherever you like.

If you’re new to meditation, it can initially seem kind of funny to spend time on yourself; it can feel kind of selfish or conceited. But really you’re making a commitment to your happiness such that you can then offer genuine joy to others. Sharon Salzberg makes the connection that such an intimate inner life allows us to be intimate with others. She explains, “We see that all beings want to be happy, and that this impulse unites us. We can recognize the rightness and beauty of our common urge toward happiness, and realize intimacy in this shared urge.”

More on this as it develops!