I’m restructuring again here. Inside and out. And thinking about the mix of what I give attention to now.
I’m just finishing six months of volunteer work in a meditation center, grounding, in cooking, housekeeping, maintenance, and basic reception (space holding) duties. Grounding in community too, as resident volunteer. And still, never giving up on all of the reading, creating, connecting and consulting conversations that happen online and on the phone, usually at great distance.
Restructuring now means teetering on the edge of a very interesting organization that just might want a big chunk of my London time, and on the edge of a number of personal connections, old and new, in Chicago, that could bear business fruit. And then there are the community connections, like smallchange and ubumama, and a couple of listserve communities. Learning anew how to balance all of the information flow and connecting at distance, even local distance, without losing ground right here, in body, in home away from home.
Years ago I remember a Wall Street Journal advertisement saying that the average reader spent 51 minutes with the Journal each day. Add in some other reading, conversations that have moved from phone to email, a bit of blog posting, and it seems fair to devote at least a couple of hours to keeping up with the distant cloud of people, ideas and connections. Seems also fair, to devote a balancing equivalent to body and home space, cooking, cleaning.
Maybe local community connecting comes into this, too? Dinner with friends? Time with a partner? Somewhere this must cross into third and fourth or more balancing spaces. No matter which and how many, for now it seems enough to notice where base is, what base is. Do I rely on all of this wording and information to clear myself or ground myself? Do my blogging and emailing and other scribbling habits and projects make me who I am, or make me more clear and present and available as the local body who I already was?
For now, I just keep an eye on this balance between the daily information cleaning and clearing and the equivalent attention to body, home and spirit. Let the rest fall somewhere in between as the undifferentiated flow of working and living.