Books...books...and more books :)

It's weekend here! and one of my early blogs like one year ago was about how I really don't like weekends.  I am not sure why, but I guess it is because there feels to be a huge waste of time...I just lie down like a vegetable, no enjoyment, no achievement, no nothing.  Actually, this is not totally true, but it is my habitual way of being so cruel to myself.  Partially true, though. 

Like today, I had a webinar, I fetched some bookds to read, I want to visit my parents, pick my photos for the back cover of the book, fill the application for the kids' Russian passports and cross my fingers so well hoping it will be finalized.  Have to do some back office work for a consulting job I do for an NGO.  I also want to do some kind of reading list. 

I have an obssession problem with mugs and books.  I try to resist, but it does not always work.  Last week I was in Dubai, and I resisted buying this butterfly painted mug, and the pink rosy one, and one with funny surrealist drawings and the one that had a nice lid on it. I even resisted the other butterfly one, with a butterfly-shaped handle.  But I love to buy mugs, they seem to be so individualistic and when you buy one, they reflect you in a way and they are cheerful, too.

Books, is even far worse.  I love books.  Not reading books only, I love books.  I love being in bookstores surrounded by books, I feel at home (I feel this way on planes too).  I love touching books and playing with books and flipping through the pages.  I love reading them and losing myself in them.  The only thing that I do not like is feeling that I want to read them and I do not have time.  you see, I keep buying books like crazy!  I have like 50 extremely interesting new books that have not yet been read. Sometimes I wish there were some kind of blue tooth between my brain and the book and so all it takes is to hold the book close to my head for 5 minutes and all that interesting information would automatically be mine!

I promised myself not to buy any new books untill I finish (or even discard) the ones I have.  But it is so tempting to buy books as tempting as dresses to me.  I do the same with dresses.  I buy dresses that I do not ever wear.  But they look so nice and I look so nice in them that I just have to get them!

Now for books, I have a variety of fields and I am not sure where to start as usual :).  There is "Training Design", there is "The Everday Writer", there is "The Top Five Regrets of the Dying" and there is a book about parenting.  I guess what I will do, is what I have not done for some long time, Follow my heart and let my fingers move to the book.   And right now I wonder "No fun at all in the weekend?"  why not go to the movies?

I can only handle the "NOW" now

As Daniel Gilbert says in his book, we are always "nexting".  Many people also spend days and nights exploring the past or reliving it, or if not, they sort of wonder about it and why it was so not as they would have liked it to be. 

Especially in a place of not knowing, the future is full of worries.  It is laden with anticipated future pains for ourselves but also for those we love.  I worry about my kids and how they will turn out, though I am usually not the worrying fretting person.  I wonder about their schools and their personalities and how things will turn for them.  I wonder about myself, my book, my health and my dreams.  I wonder about what they will eat and what I will cook and when shall I cook it.  I even go in my head through the ingredients list, once I have figured out the menu.  I also think of money, will it be there? what about the school fees, the university fees, and all that follows.

The past is full of regrets of all the times I have not taken the right turn, all the things I said "yes" to when I should have not.  And all the things, I actually said "No" to, and it does not seem logical anymore.  As Gilbert says we try so hard for a future self that is forever ungrateful.  The past is full of scars and instead of letting them be what they are scars, we go there, we scratch and it bleeds. 

I spend days and nights full of hallucinating dreams where past and future mingle in today and create a nightmare.  I have all the components fetched elaborately from past events and future worries.  and before I know it, the day is doomed.  And when I leave work, or get out of home, or finish the meetings, I hear those voices eating me inside. 

And then I decided " May be I cannot now manage the past.  May be I cannot bear the future.  But I can handle the "now"".  "Now I am driving in my car, Now I am going to work thinking of the stuff I have to do. There is no problem with that. I can handle that."  Or I say "now I am writing my blog. There is nothing difficult with that. I enjoy it. It is safe and pleasant. I will not wander to any other dimension of time."

They come now those ghosts from the past, and those zombies from the future and I bring back myself to the now.  The "now" I can handle, even if in the cases when it is not  the most pleasant, I can still handle that.  Even if the future will be "bad" in some ways, I will be able to handle it then, when it becomes a now.  But for the time being, all I can handle is the "now", so I will stay here now.  and chain myself to a stable moment that is existing, as if it is eternity.

moving away...from what you enjoy

How lovely it is to come back.  I was editing my blogs in preparation of the book, some of which were here, and others and I realized what a fantastic time it was to write here.  I realized that this was (and still is ) a magical place for me.  Here I come back.  Here I smile a lot.  Here I realize. And here, of course, I write which is to me magic. Before writing regularly, I remember some of my light-flooded thoughts used to evaporate, but here they crystalize and remain with me forever.

And I realized something else.  If writing here in this blog is so much fun, so full of creativity for me, so gratifying and at the same time free, enjoyable and easy, why did I stop?  I know I have been very busy travelling within Egypt and outside Egypt, finishing my Neuro Linguistic programming certification and jiggling life as usual... but these are exactly what they sound like: justifications, that you give to others to avoid looking wrong.  In reality the question is from me to me: since I enjoy it that much, why have I stopped filling my life with it?

And then...the meta question pops up "what else have you given up?"  Ask yourself this question, please.  Some give up art, or outings..or cooking.  You may have a million correct and logical justifications, but how can they help sweeten the days? those justifications I mean. They don't. Whereas doing what you love and enjoy if even for a few minutes does extend roots to yourself...does multiply joy. 

So, look back and look ahead, and wonder " What nice thing I want to be doing?"