buzzing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

...........and am feeling great - though also feeling pretty buzzed out tonight!

Italy last week, my birthday weekend followed by three days of intensive work - lots of visitors - all welcome and all special -  lots and lots and lots of thinking, talking, reflecting, recognising change ...... and all that goes along with this - and also along with that the recognition of what we must now do.......... the work!

Responsibility is my word of the moment - and what a word....... a word that is easy to say but so difficult (sometimes) to put into practice........ but actually what it's all about - it's what we have to do..... knowing is easy (haha!) but doing with knowledge is such a different thing.... putting our money where our mouth is..... living it - not just speaking it..... doing what we now have to do - taking personal responsibility  - but not taking responsibility personally -  doing it, living  it... being it - and maybe taking time to recognise that we are part of the change, maybe triggering the change.... embracing the change..... being the change!

I started by saying I was buzzing - and I think the last paragraph proved that!

So today started early after hosting a small but wonderful dinner last night - the final event of three days of... work - my work, crazy wonderful amazing work.......  and this morning the discussions moved into the next stage of planning - after times when I have felt that I just couldn't see a way forward  (that was Monday!)

Yesterday was hard and unexpectedly wonderful - I was hosting an event and was anticipating it with pleasure... but the details of the right people turning up, in the right room and it being what they wanted and needed ..... with the words and discussion being meaningful, inspirational and life changing as well as the  coffee and the lunch being there etc etc  (thanks Natalie!) ... and feeling responsible - but knowing that I could only be responsible for the ingredients - the cake is always made by the ingredients, the right mixing, the temperature of the oven etc etc.

...... and it happened... I felt it went really, really well..... but you can never actually know what other people felt, or thought, or gained (or lost) from it.... but felt strongly that it moved my thinking forward - my learning - wonderful!

Tonight I feel tired - had a lovely evening with Jimmy - Rachel went back to Qatar on Monday... discussed weddings and ate well, had a great conversation with my Mum and were happy..... now I think it is time for an early night!

Buzzing bloggggg!!!!!

time to be off again....

..... so tomorrow I'm off to Italy - followed in very quick succession to all sorts of places... feels very right in a strange sort of way. I have been unwell over the last few weeks and a bit lacking in energy, and though I have been very happy to be home - I have also felt strangely restless to be off again - itchy feet!

Meetings in Italy - who would have thought that I would have meetings to go to in Italy? Mind who would have thought that one of my sons would live in France, one in Croatia and one in Liverpool with an American girlfriend living in Qatar applying for jobs in countries other than the UK because of visas - Wow!

Looks like we have become a family of itchy feet - or maybe a family that has followed our feet.......

Change is coming - change is all around us.... and that is not an easy place for any of us to be.... but it is where we are - so as I get ready to be off again - I am going to focus on where I am.... now  ...... though knowing tomorrow it will be somewhere completely different.... the winds of change are here.

As a Chinese proverb says - as told to me today by a friend - when the winds of change blow - people either build walls or windmills - and my reaction was - I build windmills - and this is exactly what I have to do.......... so off tomorrow to build windmills in Italy - how blessed  am I?

2014 has started....

... and it feels good! Still full of cold and have now got a horrible cough but it feels OK - the cough is probably a legacy of the flu. Today I went to work - which was a bit of a shock to the system after a lovely couple of weeks with family and friends - doing very little but being with them and enjoying their company and eating lovely food - very seasonal. We went to Hereford in a huge rambling old house, with big wooden beams built in the 1600s. Special -  lots of family including my boys and my Mum - it was just perfect.

I welcomed in the New Year by having a lovely evening with a couple of friends - we welcomed in  2014 with a Sound Journey, Wishes, heartful conversations, food made with love and dancing - it was lovely gentle way into 2014.

Yesterday I woke to the phone ringing and it was my sister Jenny telling me that my cousin Ellen had had a brain hemorrhage - she was still alive but very poorly. Still waiting to hear if there has been any developments...... she is only early 70s - the oldest of my cousins - but was very fit, walked a lot, slim build, healthy diet - the last person I would have thought of.

It's one of those things that you can't do anything about but wait.... keeps re-appearing in the mind..... My Mum was told but she has forgotten - well I have talked to her twice and she hasn't mentioned it - I am glad - she doesn't want to know - so she just blocks it out. She was noticeably frailer this holiday  - she also has a sadness which is new - well it's been coming on for a few weeks now...... Having said that she had a great holiday - loved it - loved the family all around, eating everything, joining in as much as she could, she even had a couple of glasses of wine one night and got very argumentative  about Hitler - Jimmy and Rachel made a very good audience - but you can't argue with someone who says - I know I am right because I was there!

So 2014 has started - with all of the fraility of life and all of the joy - from  new babies to sadness......

What an amazing world we live in - every precious second of it.

Goodbye 2013 and welcome 2014..........