It's been 3 weeks since I've returned to the practice of daily meditation; it's been a number of yrs since I maintained the practice.  (I think it was for 6 to 10 months then.)  I resolved to sit meditation daily and found myself doing it late at night because I'm a procrastinator.  Tonight I sat before 10:30 PM -- pretty early for a night owl like me -- and before I began to feel sleepy.  How delicious to really be present for it!
 I did what I did last night:  said "soft" to myself as I breathed out, and "strong" as I breathed in (for as long as I could remember and then again after I noticed myself following a train of thought and came back to the present).  When I'm doing my sit, I often notice my toes flexing up and have to focus to soften and release my feet, then remember to release my neck, shoulders, jaw, etc.  So the "soft" is obvious, mostly -- but not only -- physical.  The strong is more about focus, discipline, etc.  And spirit.
So, as I said, I was using this double mantra, "soft" with the out breath, "strong" with the in.  And finally I found myself reversing them -- "strong" with the out breath, and "soft" with the in -- and found the experience moving, felt it highlighted the way softness and strength can feed each other, almost be the same.
I ended the sit with a lot of positive energy.  I don't want to take on any major tasks right now, would rather unwind for bed, try to get on an earlier schedule; but I brought the energy to this writing.  And I hope it will carry over to tomorrow.  'Don't want to hope too hard, would rather just stay in the present.  But anyway, I'm happy tonight.

The last entry was about my time.  This is about my body.  I think I've known for about 30 years that these were my two big unresolved issues.  The session today with my Alexander teacher was useful, as it usually is.  The note I took out of it:

     Radical sense:
     Space around me is MY SPACE.  Let it be mine. Experience a sense of grace as I move within it,

Later I wrote "I'm trying to occupy my space with gratitude and fullness -- it's MINE"
   
This may all sound like strange language, but it addresses aspects of my chronic discomfort, particularly in my upper spine/neck.  Isn't it funny how we have to work so hard to relax (release).  Kind of oxymoronic, as in "TRY HARDER TO STOP TRYING!"

But the fact is that when I take ownership of the space around me with gratitude and fullness, when I let it BELONG to me, I soften.  I think this applies to a lot of aspects of my life: the more I can feel that I own what I need, the more open and generous I can be. And I do want to be open and generous. Which perhaps is exactly why it's so important I experience a sense of being given (by "God"?) that which I need -- so I can afford to give it away.  I'm not by nature a laid back person, am sometimes concerned that being around me can be stressful for others, drain energy.  My goal is to emanate positive energy, so that being around me increases others' sense of peace.  That's a tall order, especially for someone like me, but maybe it's doable.  My mother was like that in her last years.

So here's a category I belong to:  people who retire (or partially retire) before their spouses, who have one or more significant interest, e.g. pottery, but who are ADD and chronic procrastinators, which makes them bad at structuring their time when they're not on deadline, which, because they're retired (or partially retired) they rarely are (on deadline), so they rarely even get around to doing what they love because they're always putting off doing various other things they feel they should accomplish before they get to what they love.  So they knock around feeling vaguely lonely but mostly just dissatisfied with themselves.
I don't know how many people are in this category, but I can't be the only one!
Anyway, at the moment I'm seeing my daily life as something under daily construction.  Which all life is, I suppose, but the less structured and constricted it is, the more obvious this is.  (We always have freedom, of course, even in the most severely constricted circumstances; my problem, however, is that I have too much freedom.)
I like the idea of carrying around with me all day the sense that I'm (always) constructing my life.  It feels kind of Buddhist.  It also feels kind of absurd for a woman of 66 (OK, 66 yrs and 19 months, but who's counting?)
I think I'm gonna have a good time tomorrow with my Construction Project.

Ever since I started selling my pottery -- and that's a lot of years -- I've been saying that I sell my work because I love making it and I need to find homes for pots so that I can make more.  This morning in my studio, with the radio on as usual, I heard the term "superfluous" to describe how an older person feels.  I identified with that and suddenly got an insight about my attitude to my ceramic work.  Here's what I think will work better for me: I want to create each piece with the sense that it's a gift to the person who will end up buying/using it.  Yes of course I will charge. But the idea of creating a piece with love -- love for whoever ends up using it or living with it -- makes me feel so much more connected to the world as I toil alone in my studio. And it fits with my desire to live with love in my heart as I go through my days.  This feels important to me.  So as I assess a mug -- does it have warmth and grace and will it be comfortable to hold and drink out of? -- or a small handbuilt piece -- will it elicit a smile in the viewer? -- I can think of the person it will end up with.  Creating with this perspective will keep my heart open and help me to feel more alive.