Birth of Hope

At work last night I discovered a cellist I had never heard of before named Stjepan Hauser while watching youtube on my cell phone to pass the time.

(This makes me sound like a horrible employee, but when we were acquired by a very large Hospital system last year, they’ve made so many wonderful changes, so many marvellous computer upgrades, that the job has become incredibly streamlined.)

I now basically sit in a little locked room answering the phone (which rarely rings) typing up a handful  of “on-call” lists, and monitoring several medical equipment and alarm panels as well as the Code Blue System, ready at a moments notice to turn into a regular “Paul Revere” and sound the alarm in the event anything goes amiss.

Fortunately, not many things go amiss, so I have to find clever ways to keep myself awake and alert.

Sometimes just twiddling my thumbs, sometimes snacking, or reading …  but last night I opted for youtube and wanted to listen to some classical music and found this cellist with the Zagreb Philharmonic …. and have been enraptured ever since.

I came home this morning determined to dig out my music and start playing the piano again ….. which was a disaster, I haven’t played in years for one, and the piano is horribly out of tune for another.  It wasn’t the joyous reunion with music I had been hoping for, but I must say that it did make me laugh.

Haven’t yet decided if I want to have the piano tuned or not ….. there are so many other things I ought to be doing with my time here at home.  Like cleaning, painting the walls, cleaning, then cleaning some more.

My house looks a little sad these days …. not exactly sure how to cheer it up ….. cleaning alone will only go so far … the furniture is comfy but old, the pet menagerie has taken over so everything looks a little careworn …. and my dogs are old timers, they won’t be here for very much longer so it isn’t as if I want to run right out and buy new furniture and flooring this very minute.

Yet something needs to change in my life.  Not just my surroundings, but finding a way to add more joy as well as more structure to my day to day life.  Somewhere along the way I’ve lost my joie de vivre.  I used to have that.  What happened?

How listening to music and discovering a particularly talented cellist led me to this train of thought, I have no clue.  But it has.  There is just something about exceptionally performed music that sometimes, not always but sometimes … awakens some sense within me … almost like a e a brief remembrance, deja vu,  of something so wonderful, something so familiar, something I have been deeply missing, even longing for …. and suddenly it’s right there in front of me for the most fleeting of moments, and gone just a swiftly before I can identify what exactly this marvelous mystery of something missing from my life actually is.

Then I look at myself, and my life … and I see …. an undisciplined and rather fat and homely old woman who lives in a shoe with so many animals she doesn’t know what to do!

Okay, it’s not that bad … but it’s awfully close.

There are things I need ….. have needed to do for many years that I’ve avoided out of sheer laziness.  Yet as long as there is life there is hope even for me.  But where to start?

Three easy things for this week.  Tidy as I go.   Take time to do something each day that will better myself.  Pay attention to the little things.