In August, I decided to seek change. While life will always be a series of peaks and valleys, it was time for me to invest in myself in a way I never had before. In my last post, I talked about the infamous Last Weekend of August. At the time, I had started to build my floating meditation deck and also registered for Yoga Teacher Training. Here is a bit of what has happened since:

I started to build my meditation deck with essentially none of the needed skills and no real plan, yet somehow….I built it! Me! Myself! Oh sure, some of the boards are slightly misaligned. Not all of the screws are flush with the boards. It does not exactly float (yet). However, I carried almost every piece of wood to the Down Below myself. I spent nearly every spare minute I had for 4 weeks constructing (sometimes deconstructing and reconstructing) my deck. I measured. I used power tools. I leveled. I stained. I bruised. I failed. I cursed. I learned. I grew. I did it ALL! One thing I never did was stop. No matter how frustrating things became or how tired I was, I wanted to see this through! I refused to quit on this project or myself!

Although I did not realize it at the time, the process of building this deck was my first step to changing my life. It had been so long (if ever) since I believed in myself or gave myself encouragement. I do not know when the last time was that I looked at something I had done with a sense of pride and achievement. Throughout this project, rather than the usual negative self-talk that is the soundtrack of my mind, I heard myself forgiving the mistakes. I felt compassion on the tough days. I saw beauty in the work I completed. I found strength in every hurdle. As I stood back and looked across my (mostly) finished project, I felt no judgement at my perfectly imperfect project. I found myself in uncharted waters. Literally found myself in a place I never recall being. A place where I could see myself and my efforts in a positive light! A place where love might grow for a person I have never particularly liked.

I built my meditation deck and what began as a project became the beginning of a journey that would leave me changed forever. Here is the (mostly) finished project: