Category: Reflecting

The perfect time


Do you ever struggle with the perfect time to do something, especially when it’s something that is important to you?

Every day, for the past two months at least, I have said “Today as soon as I get up I will write something for my blog” …. and every day I have filled my morning with activities.

Were they necessary – well yes, actually they were …… but so was writing my blog.

Today, sitting outside at 8.00 AM …. at last, here I am, writing.

So what changed? What happened that finally got me to sit sown and do this?

Well, it was making an agreement with another person, someone whom I care about, a person whom I trust with her word.

I’d said last week “I know, let’s make a promise, that by the time we meet again next week we will have sent each other one blog post”. She had accepted my invitation, we made an agreement.

As I sit and think about it some more now, I am aware that I almost let other things come in the way this morning.
I wasn’t sure what to write and I knew I had occasionally written an email to myself with an idea for a topic for a blog post … so I went into my email to look.

In order to do that, I opened Chrome to get to gmail.
Oh dear!!! What a distraction.
How many tabs are open at once- yikes !! Can I close any down?
First, I looked at a few important reminders on my calendar from yesterday that I didn’t have time to do …. my mind started to jump here and there ……… and then, I stopped.
Thankfully I stopped myself in the process of starting to do them.
I told myself NO.

Instead of continuing to whirl, I quickly moved those reminders onto today’s calendar ….. and then I came here to write.

As I write and I read the word NO, I am reminded of a coaching session a long time ago where I heard the words “In order to say YES to something , you have to say NO to something else”.
It’s that simple.
There’ll never be enough time, or the perfect moment.
We all just need to stop, say NO and then say YES.

It’s a choice.
What do you want to say YES to, today?

23 August 2023
08.30 GMT +3 hours
Crete, Greece

When broadband is not broad

Sitting on this peninsular in an area of Greece still largely unnoticed to anyone except the Greek people, I ponder on the limits of broadband here. It’s as if the broad in broadband has disappeared and the bandwidth has become as narrow as the peninsular itself.

I think back to my frustrations in trying to join a conference call last week. There were seven of us in total. Six in America and me in Pelion.
I had assumed that video might be a stretch and imagined being on air just long enough to smile and say hello, then switching to audio only. What I had not envisaged was being unable to see the others at all and the audio breaking up often, resulting in them never being able to hear me and me being unable to hear them for several minutes at a time. In the end, I’d sent a couple of texts when I couldn’t communicate in any other way.
Wow, was I frustrated.

And then I caught sight of myself in this ridiculous pose.
Like watching myself in an old black and white silent movie, my hand gestures and facial expressions had become more and more grandiose as my frustrations grew!

Oh how funny and absurd us human beings are in this technical world!!!

How silly I now feel. Yes it mattered to me to be in touch with my peers, a set of special women who had trained together and shared much. But there’d be other meetings in future.

Right now what’s most important is that here I am in this secret place in Greece where life is simple and rich in ways that many of us have forgotten. Here my decisions revolve around what time to have a swim, should I buy fish today as the boat comes in, and whether I have enough fresh fruit and vegetables or do I need a top up from the truck that passes by.
I thank God for giving me the chance to be here and experience life that is more down to earth and real.

I have become so relaxed after these few weeks that even writing a blog post now takes much longer.

It’s okay to slow down, I say.
I can feel each muscle relax and I breathe 🙂

What’s in a name?

I was looking at the bowl of oranges that our host had given us soon after arrival at our little bungalow in Milina. Admiring their beautiful colour I wondered ……

Is orange the only case where the word describes the colour and the fruit?

Did the name Orange first come to describe the fruit and then later the colour or did it start with the colour and then move to the fruit?

I guess I had better reach for the dictionary and find the derivation – wonder if it’s Greek?

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