Tuesday Truth: "The Vacation"

Today is Day 2 of my beach vacation, and as always, I'm just now starting to mellow out. Yesterday I still felt the slight pull of technology, the normal pressure to be available and connected, the anxiety about not working--but today, I awoke feeling rested, relaxed, and excited about the open day ahead. 

I wrote about my slight email/technology addiction in an article that is published on MindBodyGreen today (yay!), but I feel that I also need to mention it here, as well--I see this trip as rehab for my addiction to technology and email, to being needed at the studio, to being constantly on. I'll return to a new daily life structure, one without the added role of Studio Director at Tranquil Space, and hopefully, this trip will give me the space that I need to embrace my changing, slightly slower daily life and schedule.

As I sit on the front porch, sipping my tea and writing while the birds chirp and the warm breeze hits my skin, I feel nothing but gratitude for this special week away [in paradise] and the chance that it is giving me to just breathe. Besides the ant bite on my left big toe, which slightly burns and is just plain annoying, everything is perfect ;)

So this week, I'm going to do my best to be here, to be present, to soak it up and to LET GO (since letting go is such a new concept for me...Oh wait).

I recently came across a poem by Wendell Berry (of KY!) that really spoke to me, both about vacations and about actually taking part in our lives, so I wanted to share it with you today: 

The Vacation 

Once there was a man who filmed his vacation.
He went flying down the river in his boat
with his video camera to his eye, making
a moving picture of the moving river
upon which his sleek boat moved swiftly
toward the end of his vacation. He showed
his vacation to his camera, which pictured it,
preserving it forever: the river, the trees,
the sky, the light, the bow of his rushing boat
behind which he stood with his camera
preserving his vacation even as he was having it
so that after he had had it he would still
have it. It would be there. With a flick
of a switch, there it would be. But he
would not be in it. He would never be in it.

I hope this reminds YOU to take part in your life--not through technology or through someone else's eyes, but through your own. Yes, it can be fun to share our daily lives through social media, camera, and otherwise, but it can also be really amazing to just live in the special moments, without having to capture them in any other way.

[First and foremost, this is a reminder to self...]

Here's to a day full of soaking up the present moment!