Sacred spaces and critters.

I keep coming up with blog ideas and putting them aside, so this one post is going to cover a few thoughts/ideas that have been percolating.

First, I’ve started a hip-hop dance class and this one goes all year. I was going to take tap again but it was scheduled for a day that I can’t attend regularly. Already hip-hop feels like a better fit. Moving the entire body to a beat is much easier for me than moving just my heels and toes. There is the possibility of a recital at the end of the year. The coach said most adult class coaches leave it up to the members—sometimes the members are self-aware enough to know that, No, this dancing should not be seen in public. We’ll see how things go as the year progresses. The idea of a recital for an adult hip-hop group seems patently ridiculous to me but if we look like we could be part of Beyonce’s dance team, then I’m happy to show that off. Maybe.

I subscribe to Lenny Letter but I trash most of their newsletters without reading them simply because I get so much mail. However this article called “I’m Over the Milestone 40th-Birthday Trip” caught my eye and it was a good read. The author had wanted to go on a milestone trip for her 40th but she’d lost her job and she and her husband kept making plans and then looking at the bank account and rethinking their plans. She decided to hold off on the trip because she’d be too busy thinking about money to enjoy it. Instead she invested in therapy to help her work through some things. The countries she wants to visit will still be there for future, non-milestone birthdays.

The story got me thinking about travel…big trips. I don’t do many of them. I haven’t been overseas in years. This is mostly due to money and the cost of travel/accommodations/boarding the dogs & guinea pigs. But I also feel pretty content traveling in my region and traveling home to see my mom. I love driving and even the very easy drive to Ohio on the turnpike through NY state is relaxing and interesting.

As I age, I try harder to find the sacred in every day. To make every day sacred. I try not to mentally segment my day too much…I want to enjoy my work life and my personal life with similar gusto. Because these things are not separate—they are life and they are time. This is why I always wanted to find a profession I loved—so much of our time is taken with work, I didn’t want it to be taken with work that I didn’t enjoy, or that I looked forward to escaping. I’ve been fortunate in finding that kind of work situation a couple of times in my life including now.

I’m trying to apply the same philosophy to travel. Simply because the trip is local doesn’t mean it can’t be as grand as visiting the Taj Mahal. Because this world is full of interesting sights/sounds/people/critters/events. It’s the practice of seeing the sacred and the unusual and the interesting in the sights one sees everyday.

I also find myself more and more interested in animal rescue, which would make traveling ever more difficult. Already with two dogs and two guinea pigs we find it expensive to board them all. It would only get worse with more animals. But my animals bring me such joy and delight…am I willing to limit long distance/international travel for more animal time? I don’t know. Sometimes I think so. But sometimes I think not.

I’m also trying to create sacred spaces in my evenings/weekends by regularly disconnecting from social media. At one point I thought I could only do that on vacations, but recently I realized, No, I could also do that when I’m away from the office. I’ve turned our bedroom into a device-free zone. I have a book light and an analog alarm clock so I leave my phone in the kitchen when I head to bed. I’ve been tuning out Facebook on the weekends. Once Friday night arrives, I make a vow not to look at Facebook again until the next time I go to work. Since I manage Facebook for my employer, I will respond to messages/comments on the work page, but, fortunately, that uses a separate app, so I don’t need to look at my personal FB, and I don’t need to look at the work page unless I get an alert that someone has messaged. I do still respond to Messenger if a friend reaches out and I’ll occasionally post to Instagram—Instagram is so much less a time suck for me than Facebook. But I’m really trying to take control and manage my social media exposure because sometimes it feels like over-exposure. It’s a lot of fun at the right dosage. I found this lovely quote from the writer Kahlil Gibran and thought it resonated with my efforts:

“Travel and tell no one, live a true love story and tell no one, live happily and tell no one, people ruin beautiful things.”

People ruining beautiful things is a bit of an overstatement for my purposes, but I see great beauty in living happily and quietly and disconnecting from the hum of online conversations. I should do it more often.