Richer in Time Than Money

On pleasure

Here I am—yet another newsletter from the airport/sky/new country. At the moment I am not in the sky and I am not in a new country. I will soon be in the sky, god willing, but I am not going to a new country. I am going home. I am going home! Phew. It is such a wonderful feeling.

The Eugene airport is tiny. It has one gate and one restaurant. I’m trying to do better by my anxiety and instead of sitting as close to the gate as possible, in case the pilot gets bored and decides to leave earlier than scheduled, I am sitting at the one restaurant in the one gate.

I’m going to be honest and tell you all that I haven’t been keeping my Tuesday mornings sacred. I have a lot of work to do on that end—I’m learning what it means to protect myself.

Other things to be honest about:

I feel (sort of) jealous of all the people not wearing their masks in the airport. What does it feel like to not care about other people? ha. I’m kidding

As humans we are so addicted to change and growth. I was feeling tired of writing this newsletter every Tuesday but I think I was playing a trick. I was pretending that I don’t care about my time. I’m learning that I have to protect myself. I have to please myself before I please others. I’m not kidding.

The feeling of having to please others before I please myself has to be rooted in my childhood. First of all, pleasure was taught to be bad or shameful. And second, I was groomed into believing that my purpose was to please god. It’s so surprising now that I type those words out but it is exactly as I write. An invisible being was more important than my own needs. Now that I understand that I am that Being, I am doing the work of being in line with my time, my sacredness, my pleasure. I am so important but I must believe it first.

This is the first time I am going home and then returning, in a week, to the same place. It is a wonderful gift to receive time. In the past two years I’ve left and arrived places so many times that I can mark the time as a big blob called Transitional, the time when my belongings were often smooshed into a trunk or a bin or a basement. I was doing so much leaving and never coming back to the same exact place.

We call our house Lemon Palace and recently in Lemon Palace we’ve decided to unleash some new energy. I don’t know why it took four months for us to decide that we needed a play room more than a living room. This goes all back to pleasure. The pleasure of leaving colored pencils on the ground and paint brushes on the windowsill and little clippings of paper in piles.

Alright—here we go. Off to known places. Ready to carry home back here with me instead of bringing my transitions home.

Love to all! (even the people I don’t know!! thank you for subscribing. that is so exciting <3)

jo