Waxing Moon; Photo – L.Weikel

No Days Off

I was thinking about my 1111 Devotion project today as I was taking a sunset walk with Karl. I was grateful that there was enough time left in the day for us to walk, so I could at least get in two miles, our ‘usual’ walk with the dogs.

There’s a part of me that’s bummed that I only managed two miles today. And I find that fascinating – how much my perspective has changed in just the past two weeks. My original perspective, or at least the one I held most recently before the one I hold today, would have given myself internal high fives simply for walking at all today. Period.

But my recent walking expansion is a subject for another day, I think.

My thought today was wondering how I’m going to handle being away from my natural habitat. For instance, when I’m in North Carolina for Listening to Spirit, the workshop retreat I’ll be giving with Wendy Warner, M.D., on the benefits of conventional medical providers working in tandem with shamanic practitioners (LAST CALL to register!), will I have the wherewithal to post every evening?

I wonder.

I hope so.

Will ‘Canned’ Posts Suffice?

And then I thought, well, I could always write up a couple of ‘pinch-hitting’ posts ahead of time. You know, a couple of emergency posts I could keep ‘in the can,’ so to speak, for use when time gets away from me or I’m too exhausted to type my own name much less write a coherent sentence.

I’ve flirted with that idea before. So far, as you can tell if you’ve been sticking with me (and thank you if you have!), every post has been one that was written right before I hit <<send>>. Some have nearly been stream-of-consciousness. Some have actually been reflective. And some have been a bit random, I’ll admit.

But not a single one of them has been generic. Canned. Pre-writ. Yet.

When I’m in North Carolina (or, optimistically, in Peru or Siberia, or maybe Iceland or some as yet unnamed nations on a couple other continents I want to experience perhaps within the next three years), I’m going to be challenged.

I don’t think about it all that often, but I take for granted that I’ll have some quiet time late each night when I can sit with my little MacBook Air and peck out a post. But when I get with my tribe in person, when we’re talking late into the night about encounters we’ve had that day in this world or others, I may easily lose track of time.

What About the Wilderness?

I’m also starting to ponder what might happen if I go off on a retreat in the wilderness. And I mean literal wilderness. No laptop. No cellphone. No means of communicating with any of you.

The thought of that gives me pause.

I may bitch and moan to myself (and OK, to Karl sometimes) that it’s really hard to think of something to write about every single day. But after 152 days in a row (and that figure there just boggles my mind right out of the box), I’m seriously invested.

This Is Deep – and Getting Deeper

This 1111 Devotion is a commitment that grows deeper and more meaningful to me with each passing day, with each notch on the wall that says, “I showed up.” Because the rest of that sentence is, “I showed up and I did it for Karl.”

So I find pondering these two possible scenarios a bit anxiety producing; I feel my heart quicken a bit when I think about finding myself in a situation in which posting might be either extremely difficult or physically impossible.

I guess I’m still trying to figure out the value of this exercise, beyond it simply being my own personal dedication to my son.

I’m assuming my perspective will evolve. Out of necessity, eventually, I will probably need to compromise to an extent my current expectations of purity.

In the meantime, I’m going to continue to set and pursue my purist goals. Fresh thoughts each night. Even if they’re random.

(T-958)