last night pep talk
in journal
in a handful (well, two, just barely) of hours we’re getting on a train to then get on a shinkansen (super high speed train) to osaka. after a day there, via shinkansen again, off to the tokyo area for two days. then fly directly (yay) into l.a. where we’ll be for way too few days doing a ton of stuff (and hopefully squeezing in visits to my three favorite l.a. restaurants) and then back to la paz. whew. and we gotta hit the ground running there too. so much, so much!
but tonight, i’m enjoying this house. it’s a beautiful old wooden house, built almost a hundred years ago. the roof looks like dragon scales (!). the shoji are beautiful and surprisingly very insulating. the garden is lush, still bringing in new blooms even this late in the year. neighborhood cats pounce and play in the newly-cleared yard. getting dinner together with beautiful dishes that show the mark of a proud housewife not so long ago. and as for our little girl.. the tatami mats have made for soft(-ish) landings while she has been learning how to crawl. she played on the indoor porch, sitting in the sunlight, with zabutons surrounding her in case she tipped over, right where her grandfather and great-aunts played when they were little. she sleeps every night in the room where her father and uncle did as boys. she regularly tosses big grins to the portraits of ancestors above her head as she babbles away. i love love that kind of history.
there’s so much potential in my life. i am so so! lucky to have all these options, all this potential in front of me. i’m looking forward to being back in bolivia very much but i need to remember to see beyond the day-to-day and look at the big picture. i think now that we’re beyond the fog of those newborn days (seven months old today!), i can get and more importantly ~ keep ~ a little perspective.
i want a garden. a community. a house. a linen closet. a workshop. and even more importantly, something(s) (<—ha, already getting ambitious. that means i’m definitely past my bedtime..) i can point to one day and tell my little one, see? your mama did that, she made a difference right there. and then i want double that, in bolivia and in japan. i’m thirty-four and why the heck would i settle now of all times if i waited this long to start so much?
the more i write, not right this moment in this blog post 
though i know it’s getting a bit wordy this pep talk of mine, but generally speaking, the more i write on a regular basis, the more that perspective stays. also, i think i should write a list of things i want to do this month, this year, and then this lifetime. not a novel idea, but for the first time, it’s appealing to me. i think it could help too, in keeping my spirits high when the grind of life is wearing me down.
anyhow, thinking thinking, and all in such a beautiful sweet cozy setting. i’m a lucky girl.
hope your monday is good. ~~
