The beginning of a new year seems like an appropriate time to get back to the blog. It’s been a month and a half since my last entry, but I’ve decided not to judge myself about that. It is what it is, and the fact that I haven’t been blogging is of no real consequence. Life has continued.

The truth of the matter is that I blog for myself. The fact that other people have commented on some of my posts and given me encouragement is a bonus. I can’t blog for other people, though. That kind of thinking sets me up for failure. If I try to make my blog into something that will please a certain type of person, or a certain group of people, then it’s not authentic. The blogging has to come from my true self, and if other people connect with that, then the blogging experience is enhanced for both writer and reader alike.

So, yes, it’s a brand new year. I’ve mentioned on both the Twit thing and the Face thing that I’m not into making New Year’s resolutions. It’s just not something I do. I feel it’s over-hyped and that it’s a thing that people do because it’s a thing that people do. (Sorta like Paris Hilton, who’s famous for being famous.) It’s kind of a collective mass-consciousness phenomenon, and it rarely turns out well, because people set the bar too high for themselves and ultimately fail in their attempts to make changes in their lives.

Okay, so, I’m a party pooper.

Anyway, despite the fact that I’m not making any resolutions, I am trying to make changes in my life. There is, in fact, one very large area of my life that I have decided has to change, and I’ve been focussing on it since the fall.

It’s called “present moment awareness”.

I can state categorically that this past summer was a roller coaster ride of stresses and changes. I experienced two job changes in as many months and my mother went into hospital and then very quickly into the queue for nursing home placement.

The stress turned into fear, and I quickly became aware that I was in a constant state of dreading what was to come. First it was the short-lived coffee shop job, then it was trying to find homes for my mom’s cats, then it was training for the new job at the financial institution call centre and facing the prospect of going out on the phones.

My system could barely handle it.

What these experiences brought me to realize was that I have for most of my life lived in a state of looking towards the next thing or looking back on some past thing. Very rarely, ever, in my life, have I been in a state where I could simply enjoy what I was doing and be “in the moment”. It has happened, but not very damned often.

The stresses of the summer simply magnified the situation and shone a tremendously bright light on what I now see as an intolerable state of affairs. I realized that I could no longer continue to live my life the way I have always done. I cannot live in a state of fear and dread, and I cannot tolerate the level of stress the summer months brought my way.

So, I decided to make a change. I decided, back in September, when my training was nearly over and I was about to join my team on the phones, that I had to start living in the present moment and stop living in the past and future. There was no alternative for me. If I was to enjoy life at all, if I was ever to feel comfortable in my own skin and step away from the fear and dread, I was simply going to have to be more consciously present.

I read Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now a few years ago, and I found it both enlightening and empowering. The focus of his book is exactly what I’ve just been talking about: living in the present moment and escaping the trap of constant, unwanted thoughts that drag us into the past or propel us into a nonexistent future. The way it’s written actually caused me to shift my perceptions as I was reading it.

So, back in September, I started rereading the book. I also had a copy of his second book, Practicing the Power of Now, and his fourth book, A New Earth, both of which I had started but never finished. This time around, I not only reread the first book but also moved immediately to the second book. I also purchased a copy of his third book, Stillness Speaks, just before Christmas, and I’m now reading that one. When I’ve finished it, I’m going to start reading A New Earth again. And when I’m finished that one, I’m going to go right back to the beginning and read The Power of Now a third time.

It’s important to me that I keep this stuff in the forefront of my mind. I can’t allow myself to go back to the way I was. That way lies madness.

I’ve also started meditating. I have a book called 8 Minute Meditation, which is written in a light and accessible style and lays out a pain-free way to work meditation into even the busiest of lives. It’s an eight-week program wherein you meditate for eight minutes each day, and since I started it, I haven’t missed a day yet.

I have so much to say on this topic that I find myself typing rapidly as I write this. I try to keep my blog posts to less than a thousand words, however, so I’ll finish off here for now.

There will be more. I feel the need to go into more detail on what I consider to be a very important area of my life.

Let’s keep it real out there.