Breathing Day 14, Not Complaining Day 1

I did really well on the not complaining front yesterday. But slipped over the line just so very briefly on criticizing and again on gossipping. Sylvain and I talked about it. All my slips come at the end of the day when he is using me to debrief from his day. He was apologetic, but I said, “hey, I have it easy right now. Think of how hard this must be for people who go to work and interact with dozens of people through the day.”

It’s okay. Today can be day one again. I am learning so much about myself and about the nature of negativity.

Today was the first day of a 2-week course I’m taking on Internet job searching. Being in the class was a great opportunity for me to watch my ego. It was fun to observe one teacher’s ego doing a little dance with a student’s ego. Who is the alpha male here? I could feel my own ego doing the same dance with a female teacher, just like two wolves circling and sniffing each other. I floated back and up and became the observer. I smiled.

Now I’m back home with 20 pages to read for homework, as much translating as I can manage before bed and also grocery shopping in preparation for my weekly cooking day tomorrow. Since I will be in class all day, I’ll get everything ready tonight so that in the morning all I have to do is plug in the slow cooker (stew) and when I walk in at 3:30 I can start the corn bread.

Oh, and that job posting that screamed my name the other day? I had an email from the president just now asking me to call him. (You know, one of those small companies where the owner wears the HR hat, too.) We had a nice pre-screening phone interview which resulted in his asking me to drop by later this week so we can get a feel for each other up close. So Ma is loaning me the car for that on Thursday.

I glance up at a jet leaving a wiggly white contrail on the azure sky and smile. It is mild out. The setting sun is hitting the top halves of yellow-gold maple trees and casting long shadows on the rooftops.