How did we get here?

Have you ever stood still for a moment and wondered how you'd gotten there, to that moment, that place, that age, that situation?

I'm fortunate to have received some great techniques for stopping myself, pausing everything, and bringing myself back to the present moment. Sometimes it works better than others, but for the most part it calms me down, something someone like me, who over thinks, needs a lot!

I've had a very busy few weeks, mentally, emotionally and physically. All faucets of my life have been through the mills but I'm back, standing on strong feet.

The technique I want to share with you comes from an ancient technique, one that is widely known and practiced. I learnt this technique a year go and I've seen vast improvements in myself.

I call it a Stop. Basically it does what it says on the tin.

Sit or stand comfortably, hands relaxed.

Feel the weight of your body on the chair or on your legs.

Listen to the sounds within the room.

Listen to your breathing, in and out, feel it go into your lungs, nourishing your body.

Listen to outside the room, what can you hear?

If your mind wanders bring it back to now gently, listening to your breath in and out.

You can adapt this exercise to your needs, doing a micro-stop or a longer maxi-stop. The effects are calming, it brings you back and centers you.

Late night music emotions blog

Does what it says on the tin. SAY THE WORD, FA-CIN-A-TION. An unhealthy one at that.

Hang on, gotta change Britney.

P!nk, much better. I'm in a pissy mood, heads racing and all I want to do is go and dance like a possessed nutter to get it all out of me. I'm fucked because I live a life of sin.

Thought I'd do some mindfulness but a wise friend once told me its not a great thing to always try to be your best, sometimes you need to feel what you feel and get on with just feeling. So in went the headphones and on went the laptop.

Katy Perry. Kissed a girl and got better from there. You over think, I should know you're no good for me! Trouble is it ain't so black and white, it's an awful murky grey right now.

Sorry I cannot hear you I'm kinda busy... I left my head and my heart on the dancefloor! Oh too true honey. My head wants nothing more than to be blasted out of it so I can't think anymore.

WARNING: This will not be a nice pretty beginning-middle-end post. I'm a disastrous English student. This is a thought-process post.

So... I've been feeling odd for a few weeks now. Very restless, very outside the boxes of society. I had gotten so in-depth with my Jewish studies I had lost touch with my other inner voices. Not the nasty ones, the guiding ones. I spent a week with some of my favorite people in the world. I got back in touch with these guiding voices. My prognosis: utter confusion.

I am not a neat package. I change my mind. I follow flights of fancy and get so wrapped up in them. I proclaim to the world that I'm one thing and a week later take it back. I'm high maintenance.

I am a spiritual person. I'm constantly learning what that means. For a few years I've believed in the energies of the universe, that everything is connected through energy. We spend energy and take it. You cannot destroy energy but you can convert it. It's a scientifically proved thing. But outside of the science stuff I believe there's a lot more to this energy thing. I believe intuition is based on energies, that if we fine tune this sense we can read energies. I believe we're designed to read these energies but because it's not a concrete science it's a skill thats played down.

I'm currently working my way through Kate Barnstein's "My Gender Workbook". It's a fascinatingly hilarious roller-coaster through the social construct of gender and how we can get past it. So at page 31 I've found a brand new box i don't fit into. Gonna go buy some man perfume to celebrate.

I've been anxious for the past few weeks about different things. About how frequently I change paths and how much I let people in only to have to tell them I'm on a new course a few months later. I'm worried I'll never find what I love because I keep growing and searching and changing my mind on things. I have very little that's truly constant in my life and I wonder if thats because I try too hard to make things matter to me when really they don't.

TBC

I'm listening to rainy-mood.com and titanic piano solos on YouTube and my heart is miles away.

"Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being "in love" which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossom had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two."
-St. Augustine

"A kiss is a lovely trick, designed by nature, to stop words when speech becomes superfluous."
--Ingrid Bergmen

"My night has become a sunny dawn because of you."
--Ibn Abbad

"In dreams and in love there are no impossibilities."
--Janos Arnay

"In my wildest dreams, you always play the hero. In my darkest hour of night, you rescue me, you save my life."
--Bliss and Cerney

"But to see her was to love her, love but her, and love her forever."
--Robert Burns

"You're nothing short of my everything."
--Ralph Block

"I love her and that's the beginning of everything."
--F. Scott Fitzgerald

"I wished for nothing beyond her smile, and to walk with her thus, hand in hand, along a sun-warmed, flower-bordered path."
--Andre Gide

"Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own."
--Robert Heinlein

"It's so easy, To think about Love, To Talk about Love, To wish for Love, But it's not always easy, To recognize Love, Even when we hold it.... In our hands."
--Jaka

"Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction."
--Antoine de Saint-Exupery

"Sometimes your nearness takes my breath away; and all the things I want to say can find no voice. Then, in silence, I can only hope my eyes will speak my heart."
--Robert Sexton

"Within you I lose myself. Without you I find myself wanting to become lost again."
--Unknown

"The most wonderful of all things in life is the discovery of another human being with whom one's relationship has a growing depth, beauty and joy as the years increase. This inner progressiveness of love between two human beings is a most marvelous thing; it cannot be found by looking for it or by passionately wishing for it. It is a sort of divine accident, and the most wonderful of all things in life."
--Sir Hugh Walpole

"Love means to commit oneself without guarantee, to give oneself completely in the hope that our love will produce love in the loved person. Love is an act of faith, and whoever is of little faith is also of little love."
--Erich Fromm

"There is no remedy for love but to love more."
--Henry David Thoreau

Women

I love women. Love. Strong word but it can only begin to explain my fascination with the female being.

I love their aura, the way sunlight bounces off their skin, their amazingly creative ways of always looking individual and absolutely incredible.

I love how each woman brings something new to the table. How each woman is a nurturer, a smile waiting to happen.

This love first began when I was quite young. Girls were amazing, powerful, clever. Girls could ruin my life in a way boys never could.

I had my first girl crush aged 14. It terrified me. To the child of a strict Catholic upbringing it was worse than a mortal sin. I thought I had this flashing light following me, a billboard above my head that showed my innermost thoughts for the whole world to read and find weird, odd, wrong.

I landed in bisexual land aged 15, telling two close friends who interrogated me. I ran back to my closet but they never said a word.

I felt different. I was always different. I saw things in a way others never did. Like my eyes were different to everyone else's. I saw women. Powerful women. Women rule the world. I became outraged at patriarchal society for stifling women, for hiding us away in our kitchens. We have so much more to offer the world than kitchens.

I always considered myself a feminist. It was one label that never scared me. Not like lesbian. Lesbian scared me. Lesbian meant being harassed by the straight girls, having short hair and wearing Doc Martins. It meant never being understood by society and being an outcast.

I don't call myself a lesbian. I identify with 'gay woman' more than lesbian. Lesbian for me means the older generation, the bulldykes who hate all men and wear vegan clothing. I am a gay woman.

I am a gay, feminist Jewish woman. Liberal of course. Women light the candles, bring in the Sabbath, are a vital part of the community.

Women will one day rule the world. Men are dying off. Most of the Y chromosome (the boy one) is useless. Someday there will be just women.

I'm reading The Vagina Monologues. I want to perform it someday with a full lesbian cast. I believe in the power of women to change the world.

iPhone, iPhone, iPhone. For a long time I debated purchasing the biggest craze the phone market has seen. At first my argument was it wasn't on my network. Then I convinced myself it was just a huge hype. Then that it would be updated so much I'd be left wanting the newer version.

However my desire to experience this undeniably phenomenal piece of technology finally got the best of me. After a particularly hard few months I decided that I DESERVED this beautiful work of metal, glass and magic. To adverts.ie! In less than 72 hours I have myself a new child. And I kid you not (excuse the horrible pun) it is like a child to me. I tuck it into bed beside me so it can monitor my sleep, I have it wrapped in a hard shell to prevent from broken screens.

I am (once again) in love with a piece of technology.