It seems a strange time to be going on holiday.....

...but also a very right one.

Last August when I sat in the final Spirithorse circle - Shivam asked who wanted to go to India - and as I looked around - to see who's hands were up - I realized mine was - which just seemed the right place for it to be!!

Though I am actually very tired - last week and this, saw the finale of months of work - and in many ways the timing has been really good - as it has been a very hard few weeks/months. I'm also leaving things with a lot of uncertainty about my future at work but also feel very reconciled to this. My life will change whilst I'm away, through changes to me and changes to circumstances. I can now do no more but embrace whatever occurs.

Which is a good starting point for a holiday - though this will like no other holiday I have ever been on - I have no idea as to itinerary - or even where I'm staying beyond the first night - so wow this is a real adventure. I know we will spend at least 4 days at Arunachala, the holy hill at Thiruvannamalai and I am going to visit a university founded by a man I met in Beirut - but beyond that - hey I have no idea!!!

So am nearly packed, visa arrived yesterday, friends due round shortly and Jimmy for tea tomorrow then a very early start on Friday for my Indian adventure - nervous, excited and just so, so lucky!!!!!!

feeling good but knackered!!!!!!!!!!

Never done anything like the big bid which we submitted today - and it has been an amazing process - months in development - 35 partners in 23 countries - 108 pages - 41,000 words - more than many PhD theses - 4 years funding - 4+ million euros. Pushing to the edge in many ways.... way out of my depth .... but knowing what I feel to be truthful and going for it - also knowing that it is not the usual - in fact quite the opposite - will either be loved and scored very highly - or will not - in which case - stops there.

Made the decision a few months to go for it - so it doesn't play the rules - good - I don't think I know how to play the rules - the briefing in Brussels said - we want to have bids which are not like the normal bids - and they've got one - the question is - will they like it? I haven't the time or inclination to do this again - so if it is funded my life goes in that direction - if it is not - my life goes in that other direction...... feel very reconciled about this - and also quite excited!

Funded or not - I have learnt so much from doing it - and know so many more things - and got close to so many people - special open hearted people - through long hard days and often nights of mainly email conversations - with me as the only one with English as my first language - and in the context of my Spanish - different league.

It is amazing how wonderful people came into your life to do the bits you can't do - but hey ask and you shall receive! Attention to detail - hard nights this week because I lost focus on individuals and where they are - but of course the small things are so important - and staying true - at all times. Feel good about all this but also knackered!!!!!!!!!

buff - who wants birthdays!!!!!!

Can't say I like birthday's - the counting of every year you have completed - do I want to be this old - but how lucky am I to be this age - a huge historical mixture of emotions - yet this year the loveliness of friends and family has really sneaked up on me.

Specialness - and tonight I feel so special - touched by little things - but of course it is the little things that are so important!

A very busy - under-statement day - in an exhausting period of my life - getting up so early every day - and keeping going - got til tomorrow evening to finish this thing - letting it take over my life - but recognising that I will only be doing this for a couple more days - and like Rob said tonight over dinner - you knew this was going to be a rough few days - and I did and it is!!!

Lovely moments - felt them very strongly - thoughtful sisters, messages from around the world, flowers from Vienna, a wonderful conversation with my Mum and my Dad - as they remembered the day I was born - my father 'catching me in his hands' - feeling so loved - dinner tonight in Chili Banana with Rob, Jim and Gilly - lovely, easy, uncomplicated - how lucky is that!

So buffff birthdays I can cope with you - yes I am getting older - but how lucky am I to be alive - and so loved - just so amazingly lucky!!!

When wow becomes hard work... reality check

I keep coming back to the onion skin analogy - you just get through one layer - and then there's another one! Buuuuuuuh - life is like a walk that you set off on - really happy - with a plan to do that little hill in front of you - but you get to the top of that - and what can you see? - another one - so you think I want to get to the top of that one too - so you go for the next one - and surprise surprise - get to the top of that one and guess what! another 'bite size' mountain ahead - so you say I'll do that one too - and then - and then - and then.........

Then you stop and think how lucky am I - to be here - to be climbing this mountain - to be out breathing this fresh air, to feel the breeze in your face and to see the world from a new vantage point - amazing!!!!

Then you continue to climb the mountain - though by this time it is fair to say your feet and other parts of your body hurt - and you are no longer certain if there will ever be a 'mountain top'. But you are hooked on that feeling of being on top of the world, the view of everything around, beneath and above you and the amazing joy of being alive...... and you also recognise that you don't actually have any choice - so you veer between joy and pain... wow ..... well it makes sense to me!!

Context for this - a good weekend - of extremes - Finns on Friday, Wassailing party Saturday - both wonderful - thoroughly enjoying both my professional and my personal life- with good people, honesty and a lot of FUN!!!!!

Doing this on my own - including crack of dawn starts to days working on important (to me) stuff - plus drinking too much and dancing - but you can never dance enough!!!! Know I'm not alone - but hey - I do feel pretty alone quite often - sorrow/joy needs to be felt!!!

Wow - I'm on this mountain trek called life - and I'm still here - this is good - being here is good - feel strong - but also vulnerable - but that's OK.

Hey ho - how lucky are we to be alive!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A week into the new year........

From rainbows on a Spanish mountain top - to snow in a city - an unusual week!

A week of work, tucked up in the house, thrashing out the European proposal. Good thinking - and deep and relevant thinking for my future year. At the moment I don't know where my year will take me - it could go in so many directions - how extra-ordinary is that - wow I'm just so blessed.

But, I also know that I need to keep my feet firmly on the ground..... that was one of the very strong messages of Spain - to stay grounded. I think I have to do this in all aspects of my life - to consciously focus in on being grounded. I did this when I was dancing in Spain - and I know I need to dance like this for a while - and I think I can see how to do it in other aspects of my life, but there is a always a tendency to let oneself drift off.........................

OK - that sounds like a new years resolution, to consciously focus on staying grounded - good I hadn't made one yet - so that's my first. Though I have made some decisions about how I want to live my life over the coming year. Spanish is important - I want to spend as much time as I can in Spanish speaking countries in order to learn how to 'think' in Spanish. Family, friends and colleagues - the people in my life - are just so important, new and old, I do think I need to think through how I am consciously grounded in my relationships with them all. Work, I feel that I will go with my intuition, that doesn't sound very grounded but I have worked very intuitively for a long time now - so with work I will just continue like this. Teachers, yes, they are very important to me at this stage of my life, I need to respect my teachers but learning is a mixture of consciousness and intuition - so I will prioritise giving myself time to do both - I suppose that's a form of being grounded - giving oneself time.

But I smile at myself and the seriousness of my blogg - so I will give myself the time and freedom to have fun and to cherish and enjoy every second of this amazing thing called life!!!!!

Amazing, extraordinary New Year......

It's sometime very early on the 3rd of January and I have just come back from Spain.......... I'm wide awake in bed, music on, drinking chamomile tea and eating Christmas cake 'cos that's the only thing I could find to eat... with a hot water bottle at my feet - so I'm perfect... but I'm also completely at a loss for words to describe my new year.....

What I actually want to say is .........wow................ wow............... wow..... dear blogg I have been doing some amazing things over the last couple of years but my experience of the last few days has beaten them all. There were so many different things happening which all added up to a heady and powerful mixture - but maybe it wasn't a lot of things together - maybe it was just the whole thing - as a complete thing - or maybe it was just what happened to me - or .... maybe I have just become totally incoherent!!

OK - certain things can be described - an amazing house, built specifically for dancing, on top of a mountain, above a river in flood, surrounded by olive trees, the extra-ordinary weather, gale force winds, huge clouds, mountains with snow on their peaks, a full moon and so many rainbows they were in danger of becoming common place - huge rainbows which arked over the valley, often double, dwarfing the mountains with their intensity.... we even had a lunar rainbow from the full blue moon in partial eclipse on new years eve.........

So that was the setting for eight of us to ceremonially dance out the old year and dance in the new one... which we did - the deepest, wildest and most profound dancing I have done... beautiful, wonderful and transformative.

We also sat around a large table and ate the best of food, drank wine, told stories, talked and laughed but most of the time we danced and went deep and then deeper.................................... wow - it truly was amazing.

Dancing like that, with a powerful teacher, is a gift... but I also recognised myself and the work I put into my dancing... it wasn't easy ... many times it was painful, excruciatingly painful.... but it was worth it... I learnt so much from my fellow dancers and I know that they learnt from me.. and it was also just such an amazingly beautiful process...

This is a bit incoherent ... but back to my mantra - how lucky am I..... something new though - luck and recognising and cherishing good things - big and especially small - go hand in hand....