Toss it back on the train tracks.

The end of summer draws closer and closer every day. What do I have to show for it? Not much; a tan, some relaxing days, a few cases of heat stroke and some new scars. Lately I have been feeling terribly listless and totally useless. Doing the same thing OVER and OVER and OVER again. Well that's what I thought at least.

The computer is a bit of a leech on our lives I've come to see. We check this site and that site over and over looking for something new to pop up to entertain us for a brief moment or two and then we go back to lazing around until we get bored and then go back to the computer. There's no schedule in all of it, it's a random, energy sapping fascination. Very bizarre to me, now.

I suppose my whole realization is that I need to stop feeling so goddamn sorry for myself, I'm alive and I have food (and A/C, seriously). The whining about having nothing to do and blehhh blehhhh blehhhhhhhhhhhhh is only a self-defeating (yeah I know, "no-self") cycle. So I've put myself on a more rigid schedule. Wake ups, meditations, working, reading, computing, breakings, yogaings, all pretty much planned out. More and more I see why sesshin (intensive zen meditation retreats lasting from 1-90 days) are so freeing even though there is a VERY rigid schedule. Here's a typical one I found:

03:40 Wakeup
04:10 Zazen
05:00 Kinhin
05:10 Zazen
06:00 Serve-up/Breakfast/Break

07:10 Zazen
08:00 Kinhin
08:10 Zazen
09:00 Kinhin
09:10 Zazen
10:00 Kinhin
10:10 Zazen
11:00 Kinhin
11:10 Zazen
Noon Serve-up/Lunch/Break

01:10 Zazen
02:00 Kinhin
02:10 Zazen
03:00 Kinhin
03:10 Zazen
04:00 Kinhin
04:10 Zazen
05:00 Kinhin
05:10 Zazen
06:00 Serve-up/Dinner/Break

07:10 Zazen
08:00 Kinhin
08:10 Zazen
09:00 End of Day

INTENSEEEEEEEEEEEE! But seriously, there is freedom in the rigidity. No worries about this or that, you know what you're supposed to do and when you're supposed to do it. But, I say this with a grain of salt, because if things do not go as we plan, we cannot do this and this time or that at that time as we may have planned. JUST BE OK WITH IT. Life never follows a schedule exactly. Nothing is ever how it is SUPPOSED to be, it is just how IT IS. Life, unfolding moment by moment. Teaching, moment by moment.

Now back to my dumplings.....