It’s hard to live here

There's kind of two things that I am looking at.

One is how here you must constantly be looking at thinking about others and doing your job with excellence and consideration of god and keeping mindful. It's hard and it is sincerely teaching me that I've always got to be somewhere and someone for somebody much like being a parent and I suppose or in a marriage. It is a kind of marriage being here. The days are long and it's a discipline or a way of life really that I am constantly working on. Each day I seem to have a better or worse handle on what I am doing. So it's good or not so good sometimes.

Two, I am thinking about my work at the market in Malibu. I really had it all down pat and it was like a fun game to do everything i needed to do. I didn't have the same perspective I had now and in that I avoided social contact outside of work because I could. I took care of my parents and yet I was like a well oiled machine. I'm remembering the fun aspect of it. If just one small detail of the bigger picture of how I was living.

I'm grateful I have come to the monastery. Sometimes I do need to be selfish and involved with examining the experience but I think that's normal. It's the way I make sense of things that is just 'what I do.'

Things are good