Blogs

One of the most beneficial tools encouraged throughout the Inner Fortune journal is letter writing. Journaling is simply letter writing to one self, but in standard journaling we often don’t censor ourselves. Over the three decades I’ve been journaling I have learned how the mind shifts and focuses in unique ways when we are writing as if specific thoughts were actually going to be shared with another. So, given some very deep dream analysis work I’ve been doing, along with inspirations I’ve received from the few books I am reading at the moment, I wrote a letter to God this morning. It feels important to share it in its complete, uncensored state:

“Riding waves” is often an analogy for the experience of emotional highs and lows. This phrase is one of the two inspirations for this blog title. The second is an actual wave rider-slash-photographer featured in a Sierra Club magazine that I was reminded of yesterday when my friend Stephanie showed me a photograph she shot that was as amazing to me as his work.

How many times (a day?!) do we find ourselves holding back our words and deeds and ultimately our intuition? This is an immensely powerful question that has gotten me to the roots of disabling patterns. What makes me (or anyone) hold back?

Last night after dropping my daughter’s friend off I nearly got us (at least myself) killed. My foot slipped off the gas pedal as I pulled out into the busy street and I just sat there watching the headlights of a car speeding toward me. I had no response; just sat there numb and didn’t care if I did or didn’t get hit. I didn’t care if I’d die or didn’t die.

Last night my sister-in-law, my daughter and I went to see the movie Blind Side with Sandra Bullock. We have been going to dinner and the movies together once a year as a tradition (it’s usually the only time my mother-in-law gets to the movies, but she was making sausages last night and said she stunk too badly!).

I started writing a blog called Boys & Dogs; in it I was extolling the virtue of reflecting on one's own thoughts and behaviors via her polar opposites--with gender being the most obvious. And while this process is authentic and true for me, as I wrote I began to feel pompous. You know the reaction we get toward pompous people: "AH, blow it out your ass!"

I am up early and decide to go watch the sunrise at the Quabbin Reservoir. It's been a long time since I've done this and I am feeling good, remembering how inspiring it is to watch the sun come up, as I jump in the car and drive the short two miles to the beautiful old rock wall on Route 202.

Monday morning, checking out Facebook I notice I’m not the only one returning from something refreshing. Many friends have taken a last chance vacation to another state—literally and figuratively. Some have gone to Dance Camp and, like me, are posing the question: