retreat

Retreat

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

Hello, dear readers, and welcome to Thursday! It’s been a hell of a week at work so far, but last weekend I went on a really lovely solo retreat, and I’m going to focus on that today.

I stayed in a little one-room cabin that was extremely cute:

I arrived Friday evening, and most of my time there on Friday was spent getting acclimated to the space. I ended up crashing pretty early that night.

Saturday ended up being a beautiful day! This was my view as I sat and ate breakfast, journaled, and worked on some songs:

(My husband pointed out that the pile of snow there looks rather like a leopard snoozing with one eye open.)

I spent a fair amount of Saturday writing, whether journaling or working on songs. I ended up getting two new songs written, both of which I’m pretty happy with, and which brought my final total for FAWM up to 11 songs in the month – that’s 10 more songs than I expected to write, and almost 4 times as many as I wrote last FAWM! In the evening I lit a fire in the fireplace – I wasn’t sure if I was going to end up doing it, because matches kind of freak me out and I was afraid I’d accidentally burn the place down, but it ended up being fine:

As the fire crackled, I watched the sunset from one of the rocking chairs, and it was glorious:

After it got dark, I turned all the lights in the cabin off and looked outside in the hopes of doing a bit of stargazing. I ended up seeing an old friend directly outside my window:

It was a lovely time away, and by Sunday morning I was ready to be home. I got back and had a lovely afternoon to lounge around my apartment with my husband and Nova before heading back out for a D&D game that evening, which was also super fun!

Monday I ended up waking up pretty sniffly and very tired, so I took a sick day. Tuesday and Wednesday were bonkers days at work, and I’m bracing for that to continue through the rest of the week. Still, I’m grateful for my little weekend getaway and the chance to reconnect with myself.

I will leave you with two things: first, if you’re interested in listening to anything I wrote for FAWM this year, you should be able to do that here through the month of March. And finally, here are some photos of Nova using me as a pillow for a full hour on Monday. I think she missed me while I was gone.

Retreat

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

Hello, dear readers, and welcome to Thursday. I took Monday and Tuesday off this week, but I still keep thinking today is Friday. Such is life.

Monday afternoon I drove up to Duluth for a quick solo retreat to try to reset my brain a bit. I skipped class Monday night in favor of journaling and introspective time, which was lovely. I came away from that with some insights I’m still wrestling with and will be bringing with me to therapy later today.

Tuesday morning I checked out of the hotel, parked near the lake, and went for a walk. Lake Superior was the calmest I’ve seen her in awhile, and it was just what my soul needed.

I popped into the mall at Fitgers for a quick stop at the bookstore (a tradition whenever I’m in Duluth) and at the pet supply store (to get a souvenir for Nova), and then decided I had done what I set out to do, and wanted to head home earlier than I’d originally planned to allow me some relaxed time in my own space before starting back into work on Wednesday. It was a very quick trip, but it was a fruitful one, I think.

Yesterday was a pretty normal Wednesday; today is already feeling a bit scrambled, because I have a medical appointment in the middle of the day that meant I had to shift some other appointments around to tomorrow. But it’ll all work out.

Please enjoy these photos of Nova, and I hope you all find something in this week that brings you joy!

Dreams and Schemes

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

It’s been a week of weird (and sometimes unsettling) dreams, which have run the gamut from unknown attackers trying to kill me to being unable to beat a level of a video game. It’s been full of particularly restless nights and disorienting awakenings. I think it’s a sign that I’m heading into a more manic phase. I’m in that space where my body is constantly tired and achy, but my brain is running a thousand miles a minute, and I’m just hanging on and hoping to reach equilibrium relatively soon.

With the arrival of September comes my month of shortened work weeks thanks to the variety of Jewish holidays that are happening (I am not Jewish, but my employer is), which I suppose makes this as good a time as any for me to be more than a little distracted.

The one area in which I’ve been strangely focused the past several days has been my knitting. By the time this post goes up, I will have finished the second sleeve of one of the sweaters I have on the needles (with plans to start the body at knit night tonight), and I’ve gotten it into my head that I should finish this thing in time for a little solo retreat up north that I’ve planned for myself at the end of the month. In theory, it should be possible…we’ll see if my enthusiasm is maintained over the next couple of weeks (and if the weather cooperates and goes back to some sort of reasonable fall range of temperatures so I can actually wear the damn thing).

I’m getting excited about the aforementioned solo retreat. I’m not particularly outdoorsy if I’m truly honest with myself – I quite like the convenience of city life (and air conditioning, at this time of year) – but I go a little mad if I don’t get out in nature on occasion. So I’m renting a car and going camping for a couple of nights (in a tent, but armed with a cot – I’ve come to grips with the fact that I can’t sleep on the ground anymore), and bringing my guitar and my tarot cards and journaling materials and a camera, turning off my phone, and spending a few days getting reacquainted with myself as an introvert. I’m not making a lot of firm plans for my time, so I’m not particularly worried about anything not going as planned (aside from weather, which I am confident I can work around). My hope is that disengaging from my usual routine for a few days will allow me to come back at it feeling refreshed and refocused.

Until then, I’ll be spending most of my time adjusting to life at the office without my boss on site, and knitting like mad. While I’m not thrilled with how achy my body is, in general I’m looking forward to the adventures that September has in store.