I have approximately 20 minutes before the whirlwind that is Gen Con descends and carries me off to Kansas (well, nearly…Indianapolis!)  I would love to have found a nice, long quiet time to write a few different blogs…but it was not to be this week!  I’ve even taken some pictures of some of my new outfits…frankly, because I’m afraid that I’ll be lynched by some of you if I don’t post some soon!!!

Gen Con, for those who don’t know, is the huge Gaming convention that we go to every year with our company, Cheese Weasel Logistics.  We run a program there that helps new and small game publishers get their products and ideas out to the masses (40,000+ people!) and compete with the big guns.  We used to sell products there ourself, but we don’t anymore.  That’s a longer story for another blog.

The interesting addition this year is the fact that I have NO IDEA where my stamina is.  It’s the most that it’s been since the surgery, but is certainly still very squirrely and I really want to not only make it through these crazy, crazy days, but do so with a sense of pace and calm and not be snippy because I’m frustrated with my restrictions!  As Nelson would say…just relax!

This is yet another very strange time for me.  The off-the-grid 8-weeks is over and the Gen Con whirlwind is a familiar thing…one that is a full immersion, so it’s off the grid in a totally different way.  The start of all the things that usually make up my life – choruses, teaching, daily schedules, etc. is right around the corner, but not here yet.  I have many, many, MANY plans and hopes for how I want to walk back in.  About everything – healthy patterns, balanced time, energy and enthusiasm for my jobs, care for my relationships.  It all feels just now like HUGE HOPE.  And hope is a wonderful, positive thing.  Hope is also, as I like to say, not a strategy and I don’t really have a strategy other than to “just walk in” and try to keep my sense of balance and presence about me as everything finds its place.

That doesn’t seem like the kind of plan that I’m used to, but I do think it’s a good one.  Anything more specific would be unrealistic!  Of course I’ll GET specific – carving out voice studio times and music plans, working with some food planning and an exercise schedule…but the point is that all of that will need to happen as it happens.

I’ll have to write more later about these hopes and the still-so-full feeling that I have.  I don’t want to be afraid of walking back in to my oh-so-full life and I’m mostly not.  I’m mostly excited.  But I am a little afraid as well, intimidated maybe?  It all comes back to my want to do things “right.”  Which I now see as a too-judgemental way of putting it.  It’s not about right and wrong…it’s living life well, loving myself and others well, doing the best I can and being happy.  There are MANY ways to do that and MANY of them do not require a specific level of excellence on my part.  I know this and it also takes time to change a mindset – particularly when I didn’t even know it WAS my mindset until recently.

Alright – I have to go!!  But, I did have time to grab a couple pictures off my phone – the others are on the camera.  So…here’s one of Nelson and I…Nelson with some new hairstyling and me in my new flirty skirt (which I was unsure about, but loved after wearing it yesterday!).  And then one of me on the top of Hogback Mountain in Vermont as we drove back from New Hampshire.  The shirt says…”The Spanish Inquistion – Expected by Nobody since 1970.”