Um. Less than a week.

I haven’t ridden my bike since the 2^nd of June because I had to ship it up North. Eek. Not good. I’ve been running, but then my right knee started aching, so I’ve been doing lots of walking and stretching……. We’ll see. Great start. But all shall be well. :)

I did, however, have two rounds of icecreamamazingness yesterday. First at Beals in Old Port, Portland, ME with a fabulous cousin on break from her job at summer camp. Then in the evening with three different kinds of Ben&Jerry’s at my dad's cousin's house. Ahhhmazing. :)

I also wanted to share that over 100 people have donated to this cause & cycling trip, including four businesses, several strangers and many many friends and family. Far more have contributed in other (equally essential) ways, and I just want to say thank you thank you thank you to each and every one of you. This has been a surprisingly humbling and meaningful experience for me. So. Thanks. :)

I'm in Maine. Loving it. Can't help but wonder how my life would have been different, how I would have been different, had my family stayed in Maine instead of moving to Iowa when I was six. But, minus the fact that I didn't have a meadow or horses or a forest right by my house in IA like we had in Maine, I'm glad I grew up in Ames...I think I might be a tad homesick. But I'm so glad to be here. :)

"On the shortness of life"

*This was written June 10th, but not put up until this a.m.. Yes, I'm a slacker."

Well, after many sad farewells & see-you-laters over the past few weeks, I’ve finally gotten my bum out of DC and am now sitting in a dear friend’s house in Boston. My bike has been shipped to Portland, ME where I’ll be picking it up this weekend, my bags and boxes-o-stuff have been sent home, and I am getting pumped up for one final week of visits with old friends and family, some good rides around the town where I was born, and hopefully some time reflecting on a rocky shore. I was getting ridiculously nervous about this whole “cycling-cross-country” thing until a friend pointed out that there’s no danger of getting shot or left behind or sucked up some chocolate river pipe never to be seen again if I have a hard time keeping up or if I really really need to take a break. So I’m just trying to remember to breathe and take it one day (or mile) at a time. All shall be well. :)

Several people have asked me why I decided to do this bike trip for affordable housing this summer, and what made me leave an organization that I really care about… and I’ve been pondering this a lot. I could have stayed on track, continued working at my job, become a manager, worked overseas again, gotten my Masters and built a really solid career in international development. I would have an area of expertise, a steady, modest but reliable income. I’d be making a difference and a contribution etc. But something has been off for a while. I’ve noticed that I’ve been a bit preoccupied with mortality and the shortness of life recently. My mother has said for quite a while now – How you spend your days is how you spend your life. And I know for a fact that I don’t want to spend my life staring at a computer screen, commuting to work, living in a place so plastered in concrete… I was talking to my current host and high school friend about this a couple nights ago, and she passed along an essay that Everyone should read. It was written in or around AD 49 by Lucius Annaeus Seneca, and is entitled “On the shortness of life.” Here’s the opening. Remember. This is AD 49. Seriously.

The majority of mortals, Paulinus, complain bitterly of the spitefulness of Nature, because we are born for a brief span of life, because even this space that has been granted to us rushes by so speedily and so swiftly that all save a very few find life at an end just when they are getting ready to live...It is not that we have a short pace of time, but that we waste much of it. Life is long enough, and it has been given in sufficiently generous measure to allow the accomplishment of the very greatest things if the whole of it is well invested. But when it is squandered in luxury and carelessness, when it is devoted to no good end, forced at last by the ultimate necessity we perceive that it has passed away before we were aware that it was passing. So it is—the life we receive is not short, but we make it so, nor do we have any lack of it, but are wasteful of it…so our life is amply long for him who orders it properly. …
The part of life we really live is small.

Just about every paragraph of this essay revealed a hidden tree branch of wisdom that smacked me in the face as I skimmed through for the first time. Ow. Not a new message, but more relevant for me these past few years than ever before. And it also reminded me of something my ex-manager said at SPW – that nonprofits (especially) tend to operate from this perspective of starvation and shortage. It’s about scrounging together, limiting and restricting much of the work we do and the vision we have…and was the first to pose the question for me, what would it look like to work from a perspective of abundance? Not in order to slack off or be wasteful, but to open ourselves to all the possibilities? It seems it’s similar for individuals – we live our day-to-day lives from this worldview of somuchtodosolittletime, we focus on what we lack, on what we can’t have, and feel trapped/disappointed/disillusioned by The Way Things Are... But we have more of a choice than we think we do. Not always, but much of the time. Moral of the story: I highly recommend this essay, but won’t be held responsible for any massive life changes you make because of having read it.

Anyways, this is becoming a bit out of control, so I’ll stop my ranting here. I’d love to hear your thoughts…especially around ways that you’ve been able to balance the need for security (paying for insurance, for example) with being free to live the life you want to live, and with making a contribution to the world…

As they say at All Souls UU in DC: Go in peace, return in love.

Julia.