I’ll tell you a secret...

I cuddle a pillow when I sleep.. It’s appropriately called Kurl-on!
It’s the best part of the day.
Under a blanket, around my pillow;
Completely comfortable, with only good old me for company;
No burden can be on my shoulders,
No Dementor can near me, my pillow is my Patronus! (Rowling, J. K., 1999)
A soft smile automatically creeps into my face, and I snigger throatily.

These beauteous forms,
Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind,
With tranquil restoration: -- feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,
As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered, acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,
Is lightened: -- that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on, --
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.

By William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
[Composed A Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey on revisiting the banks of the Wye during a tour. July 13, 1798].

Sinusoidal waves, tenatative selection and work output

The last two weeks or so has been like a typical, or should I say atypical, sinusoidal wave. There was no correlation between the wavelength of crest and subsequent trough. In short, I was being a Girl to the core. However hard I tried to keep afloat of things (feelings), they kept winning! Its like my mind logically knows something… my heart, in spite of that knowledge, was unwilling to accept that and went berserk in phases.

Well, compre is around the corner. It seems very big to me. It is like a validation of what I have been working on for almost a year now. If I mention the time frame and think of what I have achieved, I feel sometimes inadequate, and sometimes full of beans, depending on how I view it.

I came up with an idea. It was first a mental landscape populated with various ideas, then a process of tentative selection (I like to think that it was not just tinkering or the ‘blind watchmaker’ kinds, but that it went in some kind of positive direction), landing up with a pretty little picture that I love. If I think of how weedy this landscape was to my eye and how it is now, it feels great. But if I look at it in terms of ‘work output’, it amounts to ONE document. I don’t know whether you are understanding the full meaning of this statement, but it sits on my mind sometimes and I don’t know what to do with it.

I like the ‘document’, you understand. Its not that I don’t like it. It is just that I wonder if it is ‘enough!’ For a while now I have been wondering whether my boss thinks it is enough. On Friday I realized he does. The most important ‘validation’ of all. It meant so much to me! I wish I had recorded that moment! In a way I have – it has been put away in the ‘happy place’ in my mind, the kind I return to often. Sigh.