I have taken to questioning the past.  Hell, I wake up questioning the past.  It is like some automatic physical process, like blood flowing or heart beating.  Questioning does as much good as regret and regret seeps into it.  

It is a practice to live each day in the present and the comparison to meditation instructions is pretty clear.  When a mind goes away from the breath, acknowledge it and come back to the breath.  When the mind dwells in the past, acknowledge it and come back to the present.  Suddenly the process during meditation is easy-peasy!  Suddenly what I have been hearing and reading about -- bringing this present living into living has some basis of comparison.

Metaphor and application.

Are there a million “duh’s” out there?

Loss still sucks.

I had a splendid day at Waisman on Friday.  My first one.  I have been there since September of 2010 -- absent for most of the 2011 school year -- and it has been long haul of being the bike peddling fish.  And I know that Friday was just one day, and that Monday holds no guarantees.  

On Friday, I was able to do some work at Waisman that felt like it contributed to the community.  It was not complicated work or work that required great expertise or learning, there was little that required unique talents and gifts, but still I could contribute.  The day went like this -- early morning started in the Resource Center loading summary sheets into a newly created file, attending the Grandparents Coffee Group and contributing my $.02, then a meeting with the Trainee Resource Center Team and plans to complete the first phase of our project by next Friday, then a Wiley lecture about Fragile X, gene therapy and implications for wider use, then a LEND lecture about having a business mind, and then facilitating the Life Course Story Team.  

I was able to let go of where I fall short and just do what was in front of me.  I found some joy in this.  I immediately want to qualify that joy and say what it is not, but what it is is a beginning.  It is precious, possibly fleeting, but I am very grateful for this first day of being of some use.