let go. Let Go. LET GO.

I am sitting here at my desk in my office and look back at the month of May. I am having a large latte and its taste is strong and i notice a bit too much for me. I feel like either i want to put more sugar, or more milk, but in my mind struggle with both and don't have these here anyway. And i am totally giggling at myself.

This past month was my month of letting go. Letting go of many many many things, because i wanted to get rid of some baggage when entering the new decade. It is just too much fun to grow up and i love fresh starts.

My conscious renunciations targeted the food and habit departments. This whole month i did not find it particularly hard to renounce on sugar, wheat, dairy or even choccy. I never have much of those in my daily life anyway (ok! i admit it, strike out the latter). But the one thing i did miss was coffee just whenever someone was having it in my presence and its lovely smell tickled my taste buds. I was kind of looking forward to getting back to ice cream, lattes and Co. once in a while. But now, after a few sips i must say, i do not particularly like that acidic taste milk and coffee leave in my mouth. It is so omnipresent right now! And by all means i do love love LOVE the sound sleep this entire month gifted me with. When i woke up in the mornings, often before the alarm went off,  i just felt like this big cat ready to roar and jump off into a wild safari.

Not to speak of this one-person-no-control-group experiment. It is a revelation to me how a particular habit can determine the reoccurrence of thoughts and feelings. This month and its observational and self-experienced lessons reconfirm my constructivist world view despite heavy rationalist training in earlier student years. Explore how your emotional and mental state of mind is self-created. Stop a habit, stop info input or any self-exposure and watch for how long certain thoughts and feelings keep popping up in your daily mind and heart. You might be surprised, and then: "Welcome to the Here & Now!"

A few May renunciations were less voluntary, and still well-taken. My personal notion of "busy-ness" obtained a completely new and previously unseen meaning. Many of my friends must believe i am dead right now, given i did not even respond to their sweetest birthday wishes. I said goodbye to relaxing weekends and the work-life balance i am well-known to preach. Little time for too much stuff however taught me that many things sort themselves without any of my doing to it - wow. Just lean back and sit a thing through and be surprised how it gets sorted in its own pace and ways. What a lesson for Little Miss Impatient. And time will come again when i disappear with a non-scientific book below my nose, lie somewhere in the sun, feel grass below my feet, chatter with girlfriends over a cup of tea, grow the tomatoes on your veranda, and in the greenhouse, dance to music in a crowd of people, sew a button, fix a hole.

I love this life. I love the work i am doing and the things to learn along with it day in day out. I love the waves of work that wash over me, pulling me out into an ocean of mind, thought and calculation, where a perception of time ceases to exist. I love the people who are carrying me through this - who make sure i am fed, held, inspired, found, not stuck, learning, warm, happy, smiling, not panicking, informed, sorted, healthy, caught after i leaped, reassured, structured, optimistic, and debugged.

You are love, loved, and i bow to you. Thank you for making my dream be so real!

Oops. Renunciation of work. Escape into green.

Having said and written all this, my cup is more than half-full, the coffee cold, my work successfully procrastinated, and this morning i noticed i've started shrinking. Two pairs of shoes long had are now too big for me. 'Yay' to the ever-ongoing evolutionary process towards old-wise granny! Off to make some herbal tea.