Presence

My 3am crickets woke me up just long enough to fumble through the dark to silence them and quickly fall back into a slumber.  Although, I begun my day a bit later than I had hoped (at 6am instead of 3am), I still was able to take 20 mins to reflect on all I am grateful for and to go over my loosely organized obligations for the day.  Alexa woke up just before 7am, too late for a boogie on the beach at sunrise, but that doesn’t matter… her refreshed, smily greeting always makes me feel like I’m dancing in a sunrise.  Yoga was squeezed out this morning along with about half of my other Monday obligations.  This sacrifice of exercise is a real pisser for me, but today I was more okay with it.  I was calmer most of the day with only small bouts of panic about getting work done and meeting other obligations.  The 20 minutes of refection helped tremendously.  Just in case I didn’t make myself clear in my yesterday blog, I’ve been a crazy woman lately operating in pure panic mode all day every day.  Today I was a bit better.  Even when I received the news that my life has been permanently deleted, I stayed relatively calm.  Yes, my life has been permanently deleted.  My life for the last two years, gone… my hard drive took a little tumble last week and… well… after spending a week at the best data recovery joint in town… apparently I lost everything.  Everything!  All of my work for the last two years, all of my photos of Alexa’s birth, of our trips, video of Alexa’s first steps, first spaghetti meal, first tooth… everything… gone… forever.  While Alexa napped, I balled my eyes out.  My life was on that damn hard drive!  Despite my private tears, believe it or not, I managed to stay mostly pretty calm through all this.  Disbelief turned to denial.  Denial turned to anger.  Anger to sadness.  Then my mind started… how did I bring this upon myself?  I believe we are the creators of our own lives.  We are not reacting to our circumstances, we bring our circumstances upon ourselves through the energy of emotion and thought, through the energy of love or lack of love.  So, again, I ask myself, how did I bring this upon myself?  I try to be positive, cheerful, inspiring, loving and compassionate every day to everyone.  What did I do to cause this to happen?  Did I wrong someone somehow?  Why did this happen?  Maybe I didn’t wrong anyone, maybe I just opened myself up to accept my next life lesson… a lesson on letting go of attachments.  A lesson on Presence.  I mean, I guess after all, it is just stuff... a whole lot of hard work for years and a lot of amazing photos of memories I can't ever get back.  But, I can always rebuild all those marketing materials, all those ads, those brochures, those websites… and at least I have my photos in my memory.  There's an old Graphic Design joke about how the second time you have to design something, it is easier.  Ha!  Many a Graphic Designers have been in my shoes before... ironically, I was in my shoes when I graduated from undergrad… you’d think I’d learn to back-up my back-ups.  The house I was living in burnt down that same week I was graduating from college and I lost everything.  In fact, this happened the night before I was supposed to present my portfolio for graduation.  Graduating from undergrad alone was a huge change in my life… coupled with a fire… I was devastated.  I later realized loosing all my work, my portfolio, my computer hard drive, my clothes, my furniture, my shoes, my cats, even my toothbrush was almost like a cleansing before I moved into my next life phase.  Is that what this is meant to be… a cleansing before I move into my next life phase?  I did mention I wanted to detox, BUT THIS IS NOT WHAT I MEANT!  This IS a lesson on Presence, isn’t it.  I need to be more present.  I need to be more aware.  To focus on what’s truly important... today.  Because today is all we have.