I have been back from Borneo for a week now and it’s over-whelming how quickly such an amazing experience can recede into distant memory (see pictures). [Photo: Fresh coconut juice in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah.]
This week, work and quotidian stressors jockeyed for position in my brain far too quickly; that noise tends to make me seize up and lose sight of what this whole project is about and just curl up in a ball and complain instead.
Yesterday, finally, I got back to the ‘good’ place in yoga class. The teacher, as we labored into extended side angle pose, kept stopping us as we tried to put our arms awkwardly over our ears. “You are so focused on the goal!” she berated us. “Keep thinking about the process; find a home at each step.” Hand on hip first, step down in the heel, open the chest, keep breathing.
Battling the post-vacation blues, I think it’s important to re-visit that idea of the journey, not the goal. There is so much emphasis on “The Vacation”, that after it happens, you feel lost. What are you looking forward to now? Reframing the issue as process, not destination, helps me with blues management. It is also helpful to remind myself that this nutritional makeover is not just about losing some weight (the goal), but its about learning more about body and health. It’s about enjoying the learning the process and experimenting on a daily basis, and understanding that there’s no one right answer. Today, one thing works well for me while tomorrow it may not. It’s about keeping an open mind.
That said, it has been great to get back to my own kitchen and cook for myself after our trip. When I got home, I opened the first wedding present we received. A Cuisinart. I have dreamed of a food processor for years. When I was growing up, my mom and I often coveted the device at other peoples’ houses, but it was too expensive to use. The fancy food processor was something delegated to gourmet kitchens alone; they were not for our galley where my favorite meal was “Trash” (ground beef, cream of mushroom soup, egg noodles, frozen peas and carrots).
This weekend I took the thing for a spin: pureed zucchini, curried sweet potato soup with ginger and hijiki salad (slices of onions). It’s awesome. One goal this winter is to be more strategic with my home cooking and store soups in the freezer and save myself cooking time during the week.
Next week: projects for 2009…
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