“Surge” (Day 5)

Hi friends!

Wow! Today was a great day! First of all I only slept for roughly 4:45 last night. Got into bed at 10, mind wouldn’t settle. So it was time to meditate. I did a guided meditation last night, opposed to the 10-15 minute silent meditations I’d done the previous nights, in order to help me focus and calm me down.

I did the meditation with a fair amount of mind drifting. Regardless, didn’t sleep that well – so much emotion, thought, concerns… challenges. Woke up bright and early to tinkle, since I’ve been consuming ridiculous amounts of water and couldn’t go back to sleep until, of course, 20 minutes before my alarm went off.

Snoozed twice then finally swung my legs around and popped up into sun salutation. I WAS excited for breakfast because I was having crumpets! Surprise! Ha-ha! I’ve never had crumpets before… they were lovely. PB & J on a crumpet with a banana, cuppa tea and water.

Went down to work on time (7:30a) to start my 1st housekeeping shift of the week. I was a little crispy as I never quite know what to expect in a housekeeping shift. This is not my background, I was thrown into it without proper training so the first few shifts were frustrating beyond belief as it took me ages to complete rooms while the senior cleaners could do it in 20 minutes.

One of my favorite staff members came up to me to have a good morning chat. She knows all about my struggles at work, and she has some of her own. She told me some amazing pieces of advice, some that were regulars like “let it go, it hurts you more than it hurts them, change your mind to think differently.” All things that are great advice but which don’t happen overnight so it becomes annoying feeling stuck when you’re trying to change something you don’t have the correct access too.

So crispier I got, now hyper aware of my inability to process anger and let it go. Then a few rooms later and we were in the same part of the motel again. She was working the groundsmen job, which she strongly dislikes because it is extremely physical work – taking out trash, gardening, sweeping all public areas, etc and all under the hot, hot sun. So here she was watering the grass in the courtyard.

She called me over and said “You know what? This is my favorite part of the day.” I stood there, bewildered, watching her use her thumb on the hose to make the water spray and fall, catching the rays of the sun on the glossy liquid while caring for the earth. It was a beautiful moment where I felt a beautiful peace from her settle into me. It was magnificent.

My day quickly got better. I got my ipod straight out and put on Adele and sang my little heart out. It’s a custom in my house that when you clean, you sing. And I sing Adele. Finished my rooms on time and made sure to stop and have a healthy vegan taco salad lunch for sustenance.

I finished my 8 hours at 3:30, exhausted and hungry. I was dying for a cigarette or chocolate and my thought process was “I worked really hard and did really good – I deserve a treat.” As if I were a trained dog who rolled over when company was present. Obviously I couldn’t sabotage myself after such a turn-a-round day. But to kick the craving of a “bad treat” I walked to the store and bought myself a litre of coconut water. Which I drank. Immediately.

I googled “how many calories can you burn an hour doing housework?” and realized I may have burned anywhere from 600 – 1200 calories at work today. Pretty amazing. So I had a huge dinner to make sure I was getting my necessary, necessary.  Made brown rice with some vegan soy sauce, TOFU! and stir fried veggies with sauteed spinach, arugula/rocket and dill. I kept telling my CP-BFF it tastes “earthy” as she ate an amazin egg, cheese and veggie omelette across the table from me. Oh, cheese.

So then after dinner we were both going to start getting ready for bed as it was almost 8 and we both work at 7. BUT when I came back to my room – also known as the disaster zone – something snapped. I just couldn’t. Clothes strewn about. Trash visible. Just stuff and too much of it – everywhere. So after 8 hours of housekeeping – I deep cleaned the majority of my room. Including sweeping and mopping.

For those of you that know about Feng Shui, this is a perfect example of the energy in me changing therefore I needed to change the energy around me. There is a map in Feng Shui called the Bagua map, which lets you know which areas of the room symbolize what. Obviously I have this memorized and am usually aware of the more cluttered areas of my room and what that connects to. All my clothes and trash were thrown in the reputation and social life area… which is now completely clean and bare. We’ll see what this opens up tomorrow.

Now it’s 11 pm and I had to finish my push-ups – my CP-BFF came in during my pushups this afternoon and cut me off at 7, so I had 13 to do. Off the wall and onto the ground now – did 6 regular ones (not a full dip though but at least half!) and the rest were on my knees still.  I promise I will post pics or a video of me doing push-ups on day 30. I’m hoping I can do 1 amazing one, if not more with out knees!

Read such a cool article on Phys.org about… sand? but, yes!

http://phys.org/news/2014-11-granular-unusual-behavior-sand.html

It was so relevant, it felt. They explain the sand being in a food processor type of movement with a central rotation and when that is rotating the sand changes completely… To me it was so transferable to my day today how I just feel like I’ve been in stand still, but now that I have some motion everything is moving now. The line ‘how the sand responds to stress has completely changed’ and I feel that sums up me, today.

Tomorrow!