From Twitter 12-21-2010

( Cut to spare the uninterested )

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Soulcollage Cards - The Woman Who Listens to Ravens and Resilience

The following cards are paired, like their counterparts in the Council Suit, the Dementor card and the Expecto Patronum card. They are related to another card, The Ravens of Unresting Thought, which is a bridge between the Committee and Council suits.

First, I did the Woman Who Listens to Ravens card, which is my Depression card.

The ravens is a reference to my favorite poem in all the world, Yeat's The Two Trees. The "ravens of unresting thought" flying through the branches of the tree he speaks of in the poem have come to represent depression for me. Clinical depression has stalked me much of my life. I had my first bout at age ten, and I'm fifty now. The marigolds are another reference to the Victorian language of the flowers: marigolds represent grief, despair, bitter pain.

The Woman who listens to Ravens - Committee Suit I am the One who walks in shadows, listening to despair.

Right now I think my depression is under very good management. In fact, since I have to be so careful to not give depression a foothold in my own mind, it was very important to me that if I was going to do a depression card, I also had to do a Resilience Card. This feels like another Bridge card between the Committee and Council suits, like The Ravens of Unresting Thought card. I am not quite sure why. Maybe because I've thought a lot about the concept of Resilience without identifying it so much with myself. I want to BE a resilient person but old habits make me think of myself more easily as a depressive person. It is a habit I am doing my best to unlearn.

The little red bird should be a blue bird, specifically the Blue Bird of Happiness. But I couldn't find a blue bird of the right size, and heck, I like red. It seems a cheerful color to me.

Resiliance - Committee Suit/Council Suit I am the One who sees sunlight despite the clouds, who remains cheerful despite every setback. I am the living embodiment of Hope.

My new car's name is ....

Kirsten.

We name our cars in the order of the alphabet, alternating boy/girl. This car was to be a girl's name beginning with a 'K.' I chose "Kirsten" because it reminds me of St. Lucia Day, the point in time when it became abundantly clear that I needed a new car. We started celebrating St. Lucia's day because Fiona had an American Girl Kirsten doll, and the books explained the customs.

I drove Kirsten to work today (managing to kill the engine because I let the clutch out at the wrong speed only once) and introduced her to the parking garage where she's going to be hanging out during the day. I patted her dashboard fondly as I left. I think we're going to get along great.

Back to the Bridge

I went on a walk on the Stone Arch Bridge for the first time in a long time, possibly about a month.

I stopped walking the bridge when I got so dreadfully sick. The aftermath of that illness was that I would go into paroxyms of coughing when I stepped from inside to outside, the coughs apparently triggered by the change of temperature. So the little slice of time that I made for myself each morning fell by the wayside and I barely noticed. I was too exhausted from my illness and busy trying to breathe. Then, weeks later, when I returned to work and the cough cleared up, thanks to the big guns inhaler, the temperature was so cold that the walk didn't seem tempting, and frankly, I was out of the habit.

I have been reflecting upon habits, and about mindfulness. It's the time of year to take stock of myself. What to I need to be diligent about keeping in my life? My paper journal had been all but abandoned this year. I am trying resume the daily entry, and ordered the journal for next year. I am trying to do daily slow kicks, so I don't die in the black belt screenings, which resume next month. After the first of the year, I will resume sparring class--the concussion was my excuse to stop, and, just as with walking the bridge, I fell out of the habit of going to sparring class. (The only difference: I like walking the bridge, whereas I really don't like sparring). But they are starting a women-only sparring class, which will remove one of my chief dislikes about sparring (teenage brown belt boys with too much testerone and no control who hit too hard). I have been doing a lot of reading about overcoming depression and about happiness, and the one proven practice that helps people keep depression at bay is, again, a mindful habit, to list one's gratitudes every day. The Decrease Worldsuck posts have dropped off, and I need to get more mindful about that, too.

How about you? What good habits have you let slip lately that you are trying to reinstate in your life?

Another Kiva loan

I checked the level of my loan repayments, and it was enough to fund another loan, with just a modest pay in. So now I am helping to buy flour, yeast and flour for a baker in El Salvador.

This is my eighth loan.

( What I did today to make the world a better place )

My word of the day: Microphilanthropist

An interesting article on a guy who is doing something similar to my Decrease Worldsuck project: he is trying to donate something, even if just a small amount, to someone each day. Here's his blog. On Twitter as @deusexrockina and on Facebook here.

I love blogs like these. Betty Londergan's blog What Gives 365 is another one I've really enjoyed.