Your daily spam (I mean, Zen)

I don't know how I got so superstitious, so dippy-hippie about my life and my body and my brain. I don't know how I manage to mesh this with a true and pure love of Science, of making things make sense. But I do.

Today I finally got the chance to read The Daily Coyote. I've followed the blog nearly since its inception and oh, it does a person good to see that joyous wild life. But this isn't about that - I can't live Shreve's life, and frankly I don't think I want to. But I can live my life. So I put down that book, a book that's almost more about mindfulness and centering yourself than anything else (because when you live with an animal, any animal, you must be completely confident in yourself before they can be confident in you) and I looked around at my life and saw how messy it's become. My mind is a mess. My memory problems are worse than ever, to the point where I'll be plotting with Ally and immediately forget the last thing that was said. (Ha, Antepathy, you probably thought I was exaggerating when I said I sympathized so strongly with Mindwipe.) I've reached critical capacity with Chemistry and feel only a vague hopelessness and helplessness in regards to school. My living situation is uncertain, the future is vague and somewhat grim. My wanting is worse than ever. My room is a mess and the bedclothes haven't been washed in a month and the house and yard need work that I don't have the time to give them, and my family is intent on sleeping themselves through their depressions. The days I don't get sun, my mood crashes and I can't make myself do anything. Everything, to put it succinctly, is a mess.

So today, instead of feeling guilty for surfing the Internet instead of studying, I am going to begin cleaning my head and my space. Right now I am going to start laundry, and then I will put things in the closet that belong in the closet, and then I am going to set up my homework right where the afternoon sunbeams will hit, and I will go out and buy birdseed and maybe even look longingly at the adoptable cats. I will gently stroke the smooth soft spots on Bruce, my deer skull, and maybe keep him on my desk. But most of all I will be mindful, and I will be quiet inside my head. And then I will do the tasks that need to be done, and I will not worry, because what will come will come and I have done what I can to make it good.