Today I woke up already knowing it would be cold and rainy. And it was. 11°C, foggy, constant drizzle. Nothing extraordinary in Brazil at 900 meters altitude.
We’re approaching spring (it’s still winter), still about two weeks to go, but spring is already making its mark in Nature. The birds have become active, the trees get new leaves … this nice faded green … this young green. Some plants already blossom and give flowers.
The day went to 15°C and as from 15:00 hours full sun and a blue sky with dropping temperatures. Tonight it will go to 3°C and then tomorrow … as schizophrenic as it gets here we’ll reach 21°C midday. Afterwards … in the days ahead rising to a heat wave of 30°C average for a week or so … sunny, without rain.
I woke up at 07:00, started with back pain … still don’t know why … and after a coffee went behind the computer to work. I’m editing our eBook Thai Healing Arts Reference, which will be quite a revision, and I’m hoping to republish it tomorrow.
While working on the book I looked something up and hit on a YouTube channel that features 10-minutes portraits about people who talk about life. I watched about four of those videos. It’s actually a great channel. Makes you reevaluate your own life.
Now, when I’m writing this at the end of the day I rethink the day. Published two posts, worked on the revision, tended some requests for guest posts, attended some personal life stories on YouTube, looked at some of the book sales we made, and you wonder … is this it?
More and more I realize that — yes, this is it. Fifty-six years young now (or old, depending on who you ask) you look back, you reevaluate, you think, you wonder. This is the site I built with my spouse, starting six years ago. This is what brought us freedom from employers, bosses, from the obligatory hours spent at work.
Still, we work more than 40 hours a week. The difference is how we divide those hours with private time. Some weeks I work fifty hours, and another thirty hours. Nonetheless, there’s not a single day I don’t work. But I don’t complain. I wouldn’t want to get back to the old days commuting and working for an abusive boss.
It’s little money we make, but enough to sustain ourselves. It won’t get grand, we won’t get rich. But being able to decide how we spend our time and enjoy Nature is a great gift. Brazil isn’t hallelujah, far from it and in a way I struggle everyday to get used to it in the past six years.
Nevertheless, the country gave me the freedom to be free. To be alone, sometimes a bit lonely, but also to enjoy the kind of life I was looking for. Freedom from bosses, freedom to explore Nature, and freedom from oppressive, suffocating governments as was the case for me almost twenty-five years in Europe.
Today I do bodywork living my body by going outdoors whenever my body and the weather allows it, in fact to keep my spirit happy. At the same time I do much mindwork behind the computer. There’s a lot of mindwork going on of late evaluating the life I live, and running our website. I hope one day it will be mostly bodywork, being able to enjoy this personal body machine spending most of my time in the mountains and forests until my last breath.
Mindwork can be good to sustain your life financially, but I have discovered that it’s only bodywork that makes you happy and sustains the spirit. And moreover, lets you sleep soundly and well. Strangely enough I use mindwork to support people discovering bodywork. Maybe it’s the perfect combination. For me.
