All settled into my new office. I cannot believe they gave me an office. It's huge, I mean, I can "close the door". Time for a casting couch. Actually, scary enough, I feel obligated to work harder now. And with no distractions around me, other than this beautiful, 17" computer screen, I don't think I'll have any problems. I'll just work twice as hard, half the time. See, my success lies in many things, not just my job. So energy is placed accordingly.

Anyhoo, meditation was riveting last night. At first, I was tired, actually dozing after the initial 5-minute meditation, when the speaker begins his lecture. Then I snapped out of it, suddenly present, overwhelmingly attentive. I thought long and hard. I cried. I laughed. And I couldn't tell you what he said, only that he spoke about happiness and attitudes. And apparently, it touched a cord in me.

But my eyes were leaking all night. After my weekly zen injection, I went to see that new movie, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Loved it. Kung Fu love story. It's like that song I love, with a banjo put to techno music. Who knew it could work so well? Women fighting, men wooing, martial arts masters spouting poetic interpretations of life's meanings, it just had every flavor you could ever want to taste in a good film.

I went home feeling very thoughtful, pensive, almost. Thinking about love and dating and life and priorities, and wow, how quickly I can get deep in my thoughts, over my head. Like a labrynth, and one thought leads me to the next, but when I turn around to retrace my footsteps and get the hell out, appearances have changed, and I'm just there, lost, deeper and deeper in my head. It can be frustrating at times. Sometimes, though, if I let myself be led around the rooms, rather than searching frantically for the next door, things will be revealed to me that I would never have found in my frenzy.

Last night, a few things were revealed to me, in a muted way. Thoughts about people in my life. Letting go of some people and my plans for them, opening up to the idea of some that I'd rather not know. Letting go of plans altogether. And knowing, for one brief, blissful moment, that if I live without stressing, if I stop trying to control the world around me, if I give in to all that is arround me -- surrender to Murphy's Law and give up all expectations of what I think are great things -- then truly great things will come.

And it's funny, you know, that I can be so melodramatic about "great things coming" and "wanting to find love". Because, when it comes down to it, at the end of the day, in the middle of an afternoon, during the peak of a party, I'm a happy camper. It's a rare day indeed that I don't stop, at least 2 or 3 times, and marvel at how fucking lucky I am in life. I have contact with people, I'm healthy, and right now I don't have a headache, I don't have to pee, and if I did, I'm not stuck in traffic. I can read and write, see out of both eyes (with my glasses of course), use both hands, walk on both feet. And right now, if I knew how to whistle, I would.

With all the little and big dramas we have going on in our lives, when you put things in perspective, you find that things ain't as rough as they seem. My father always said, "Put yourself in a life or death situation, and work your way back from there. Ask yourself, is this gonna kill me? And if the answer is no, rethink how much energy you're putting into stressing over it. And if you're even going to remember this stress a year from now... a month from now."

Sometimes, we can work ourselves up in a tizzy over nothing. It may not seem like nothing now, but in the big face of your life, it's just one little freckle. And in moments like last night, when I am laying awake, unable to sleep, and wanting to cry for a thousand reasons, I take comfort in that thought, and I remember the million reasons I have to smile.

-Barbarella

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