truths and the everyday

Jessica Hagy - thisisindexed.com

Hello blogosphere. If you happen to be stopping by, I hope you are doing well. We have been enjoying abnormally warm for November (and welcome) temperatures in the 60s this past week. I haven't written in this space in more than a week - hard to believe. I am having a bit of a lazy Saturday morning before heading off for a visit with friends. My yoga teacher is unfortunately sick and so there is no class this morning.

Last weekend we saw a great movie called The 46ers. Recommend. Halloween was fun. We never did carve our other pumpkin, so it sits on the porch as an autumn decoration. We had quite a few trick-or-treaters, but still we managed to have leftover candy. Tragic, I know. And the spouse has given up sugar again, so let's just say I have had more than my share of Skittles (minus the green yucky ones) and Sour Patch Kids in the past week.

The week was fairly busy at work. I showed a film on campus Thursday evening called The Hunting Ground. If you haven't heard of it, it is an expose of sexual assault on college campuses and how some colleges have done an incredibly poor and shockingly unethical job of handling reports. It will be shown on CNN on November 19th. Catch it if you can. It is by the same makers of The Invisible War from a couple of years ago - available on Netflix. This is the subject matter that I work with at work quite often. The added excitement came when the location of the screening had to be closed for the evening due to toxic fumes from a construction project. The announcement came at 4:30 p.m. and the film was set for 7 p.m. I knew quite a few faculty members were bringing classes or offering it for extra credit, and I had worked on getting the film in our library collection with presentation rights for months, so with the help of a colleague, we got it rescheduled to another location, blasted email and social media location changes and put signs up on all the doors of the lecture hall that had closed. We managed to get about 175 in attendance in the new location. That was pretty great.

The next day, yesterday, I gave a talk as part of a Women Working Together community lunch and lecture series. I had written my notes last Sunday and practiced them once to be sure I wasn't over the 30 minutes, and actually was quite nervous about doing it. Public speaking on a training topic is something very comfortable for me. I do it all the time. Public speaking about myself - personal stuff- is definitely outside my comfort zone. I have only ever done one other talk like this a few years ago in my home town for one of my mother's social groups, and I talked about open adoption, so it really wasn't "all about me." As it turned out, not having over-practiced worked to my advantage. I had some friends in the audience and they put me at ease. I decided to tap into the inner calm that we all have, smile, and I just spoke from my heart (and glanced at my notes). I even read a few of my poems. I had never read any of my poems out loud in public before. It was fun! I ended it by reading my all time favorite poem, The Summer Day, by Mary Oliver. It ended up going well and yesterday afternoon I felt a very nice TGIF relief that was greater than most weeks.

So today we are off on a jaunt to visit some old friends. Tomorrow I have tickets to a fundraiser kitchen tour, and later in the week I head to NYC with a friend to see Jon Kabat-Zinn. Good things are ahead, and I am trying to keep all my attention on all that is right now. I will try to check in when I can.