Change of Habit

Anonymous's comment about being gay and away from the big city (see comment in previous post) got me to thinking about my life here in ABQ. A good life, quiet and unassuming. Easy to fall into sleepy patterns of lazy self-destructiveness. The past week and a half were a good example of that. (Is a good example of a bad thing really just a big bad example? But I digress.)

Too much wine and late night browsing of cheap Web sites plus sleeping in late is one way to avoid facing the solitude, but such a rut is not healthy. So I awoke this morning and decided that I had to rearrange my daily habits. I headed straight out the door for a walk in the Bosque. The air was crisp and the sun warming. I spotted a flock of Sandhill cranes picking out their morning breakfast in a meadow, some Canadian geese (to be honest, I don't really know their nationality and none of them presented me with a visa to prove it) and a coyote lurking along the edge of the woods hoping to pick out its own breakfast from among the cranes.

Further along the stroll, I stopped to see the progress being made at a construction site. It wasn't hard for me to decide which setting that I preferred. I'm not sure why human's have such a drive to make a mark on the environment. We are worse than beavers, you know.

Even now as of this writing, the Petroglyph National Monument on the west mesa of Albuquerque is being dissected by a major highway and some of the ancient petroglyphs are being moved. I think that this is the first time major development has been allowed in a supposedly protected and designated national monument area. You would think that there is no where else in this vast New Mexican desert to build unimaginative housing.

From all appearances, the politicians and developers figure it's no big deal since it is Native American land. Imagine someone proposing to move one of the big white heads of Mt. Rushmore in order to put a highway through to build some look-alike housing above them.

I returned home and fixed somed blue corn pancakes, drizzled them with carob molasses and watched the construction going on in my own back yard. They are repairing the drain system out back by the ditch. Since the work is directly behind me at this point, my house shakes every 3-5 minutes as they dig and insert metal retainer walls. So far nothing has fallen off of my shelves, but I can literally see items jostle and inch towards the edge. One would think that the noise itself would stimulate me to get out before they begin their work every day at 7 AM.

The new morning burst of activity seemed to get my day headed off in the right direction. After this post, I will spend time mailing advertising for a hypnosis introduction workshop I have scheduled for the 20th. I plan to go to the office and do a self-hypnosis practice session, water the plants and research more clinical hypnotherapy techniques. I will work some on my budget, pay bills and do some tax filing. Might visit a friend before returning home. Will meditate before retiring to bed with a cup of hot tea and a good book. (I'm reading Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris right now.) Lights out a decent time, and I plan to start tomorrow morning off in the same right way.

Then again, too much of anything can be a bad habit.