Because I’ve finished all of the big pieces of work I had to do (for now), I’ve spent this week catching up with things which I’ve been neglecting, like filing and book keeping (or rather, bringing the spreadsheets up to date, but spreadsheet-keeping doesn’t sound quite the same, somehow). It’s hard to get excited about this kind of work, to find the motivation to keep at it, but it can be quite satisfying in its own way. Seems that if there’s something I don’t enjoy doing, it takes me a long time because I keep getting distracted, and if there’s something I do enjoy doing, it takes me a long time because I take my time over it and spin it out.
I’ve also been out a couple of times. On Wednesday I had various jobs to do around the villages, updating the noticeboards, picking up a repeat prescription from the doctor’s, going to the post office etc. Because my errands took me to the local garden centre, I treated myself to a bacon roll and a coffee in the café, on condition that I took my notebook with me and wrote. I found I can sit in the café at the garden centre and write as easily as I can sit in cafes in Brussels and write – they even do Viennese hot chocolate, though I didn’t notice that till I saw someone else with one – maybe next time, though it doesn’t go with bacon rolls. I must try and do things like that more often, who knows, I might even make progress with my writing.
Yesterday I went into town to see my daughter’s end of course exhibition at college and look for birthday presents for Hubby. It was good having her with me, because she encouraged me to actually buy things rather than just looking for ideas then going away and thinking about them and having to come back, which would be my normal approach.
But I’m going to have to go in again today to go to the bank, because I have been finding out more about the summer camp in Hungary, and it turns out that the fees have to be paid by bank transfer and received by them before 1st July, so it has to be done today, and I can only do it by going into the branch. Because it was a last minute decision to go, and we registered on the last possible day (last Friday), we hadn’t been sent the information. Fortunately, my Hungarian friend rang the organisers yesterday to find out what was happening, and I got a very nice email from them explaining all this. I could have done it yesterday and saved a trip into town if I’d known, but never mind.
Last night at meditation it was a very small group, only 6 of us and all old hands. I found it difficult because my bruised tailbone makes it hard to sit comfortably for long periods. We did the meditation of loving kindness. In the second stage, you choose a good friend and think about wishing them well. But while thinking ‘May he be happy, may he be well’, I caught myself thinking: ‘I don’t want him to be TOO happy without me’ – which is rather ungenerous, but at least honest. I think maybe I have a long way to go.