I am tired, but I don’t feel like I did much of anything today (aside from the usual). Maybe it’s the rain. Or the inadequate amount of sleep. Anyway, this is how the challenge went today.

Exercise

The walk happened, but it was cut short because I didn’t wake up as early as I was planning. I’m not entirely sure how this will go tomorrow since we’re in the middle of a several day stretch of thunderstorms. Not that I can’t walk in the rain. But, I’m not sure I’m going to walk in the rain.

Meditation

I did have to skip the morning meditation again too. I thought I might make it to work early enough to still get it done in the morning. Instead, I ended up doing it in the afternoon not long before I left for the day. It was a little hectic. But my meditation sessions have been going that way. I have a hard time not jumping from thought to thought. I realize this process, and the recognition of it, is a major part of what meditation is actually about. But I often feel like I should be better at moving into a more relaxed, calm state. We’ll have to see how it goes and what keep of impact I can discern from the practice.

Gratitude

1. I am grateful for the kind people I work with. Some of my closer co-workers had a little shower type thing this afternoon with me and Melanie. It wasn’t really a baby shower, but we got together for a while and they gave us some things. It was very nice and thoughtful, and I appreciate that they care enough to do something like that.
2. I am grateful that the massive thunderstorms that we were warned about all day didn’t really hit us. Especially that they didn’t really hit us while we were driving home in near rush hour traffic. That could have made for a much more unpleasant evening.
3. I am grateful for the rain. It’s a little hard for me to say it at the moment because our backyard is under water and the gutters are overflowing and water has been the bane of my experience as a homeowner. But I appreciate the intensity of an East Texas rain, the overwhelm and the force of so much water meeting up with the ground in such a short time.

Act of Kindness

Boy, was this tough. I want to blame the kindness of others for my having so much trouble. How can I find time to be nice to other people when they’re so busy being nice to me? I feel like the opportunity for a random act of kindness is a little more difficult when you don’t spend that much time talking or bumping into other people throughout the day. I even found myself thinking of kind acts I performed yesterday or earlier, as if I could use them as a credit for today. That obviously isn’t the point, so as the day wound down, I felt myself becoming a little desperate. I could maybe shoot off an email with an encouraging word or compliment to a friend. But it felt a little too forced in the moment. So, I compromised and decided to be kind to Theo by letting him play with water, and the water sprayer, in the kitchen sink without it bothering me too much. I don’t know how well this fulfills the spirit of this task. I need to start looking for more ways to be kind to others instead of just hoping it happens and then trying to remember it later in the day. I’ve said this before. I should start acting it.

Something good that happened

As I mentioned above, some of my co-workers were quite nice today when we met for our little twin celebration. It was also the first time Melanie met them, and I enjoyed our conversations about babies and teaching and collections of KISS memorabilia. It reminded me that people are really the reason that we do just about everything we do. Connections and relationships are at the heart of our existence. It is sometimes easy for me to let that slip by when I’m working in my office by myself for most of the day or riding alongside so many other lonely people on the highway. It was a nice moment.

So, that’s day three. I should probably start trying to get these done earlier.