Sunday

I have a riverwalk tour and a Second City tour on Sundays. Therefore I am up earlier than most and ride my bike downtown to get here by 10 (whether there is a tour or NOT), so here I sit at the Starbucks, after a sweet sweet ride down here. It's beautiful out today, god I love my bike.

I however, am not in love with this wheat english muffin egg and turkey bacon sammy from Starbucks. Guh.

John and I had a mini state of the union of sorts yesterday and as we talked we both realized that we're still absolutely manifesting unsavory emotions from our year and a half of unemployment.

I think we're both still terrified.

I wonder will that ever go away?

No matter what happens tomorrow, that year, the way that it happened, will never happen again. Things are already different...

Yet, both of us I think are paralyzed by fear.

And it's not about going out or spending money or any of those things, we've definitely bounced back in that regard! But, it's something psychological, it's something that's telling us both that we should still be fearful and scared, something that's prohibiting us both from letting go completely.

It's really weird.

But it's still there, we're still stuck in some kind of mindset.

It's all fear I suppose. Everything is.

Which reminds me, I read Stroke of Insight FINALLY, the book about Jill Bolte Taylor, the brain scientist who experienced herself having a stroke at 37 years old.

It is an amazing book. I'm not sure she's the greatest writer in the world, but the chance to read a book about a woman who STUDIED THE FREAKING BRAIN and then watched herself have a stroke (her first thought? "This is so COOL!"

She has such control over her brain now, she's completely recovered, but to read this book is to realize how much control we do actually have over our thoughts, negative and otherwise. She basically says you can train your brain (like she had to do to recover) to think what thoughts you want to. And if you reside in the left brain and let those neurons and cells continue to make the same loops over and over (negative thoughts) you're just strengthening those pathways.

And that the brain is totally capable of making new pathways.

Anyway, I recommend it, if you're not interested in reading it, here's her TED talk, to hear her tell about the morning of her stroke is about as intense as it gets: