We just went through a really cold spell with temperatures I don’t recall ever seeing before! When I woke up Sunday morning, it was -20°F without wind chill! Over the weekend, the temperature recorded at Whiteface Mountain (a two-hour drive away) with wind chill was -110 degrees!
When it gets that cold, your attention turns to maximizing your home heating efficiency. You notice where the heat is going and determine the vulnerable spots where the heated air leaks out and the frigid air slips in. You figure out which areas are most important and close off non-essential spaces so you can direct the heat to where it’s most needed. You might find yourself placing a fan strategically at the top of the stairs and putting duct take over electrical outlets that allow cold drafts in. When it’s really, really cold, you take a good, hard look at where your heat goes passively out the window and do whatever you can to concentrate it where it matters most. You become more mindful.
This morning, I woke up around 4:00 thinking about my work. I couldn’t get back to sleep for about an hour and a half because my mind was busy wondering: How do I make all this work? In the process of thinking, the metaphor of heating a home during winter came to mind.
When we first moved into our current house, the main door was very old and made of wood. In the winter, it let in so much cold air that it wouldn’t have made much of a difference if we left it cracked open. When the cold, winter air set in, it was the first improvement we insisted on, and it was replaced with a new, much more energy efficient door that reduced draft greatly.
Heating our home is a metaphor that can apply to how we use and focus our energy in many areas of life. For example, when money is tight or you’re sleep-deprived, you need to take a hard, honest look and consider how to use your energy most efficiently and effectively. So I consider what activities and influences in my life are like the old door and how I can replace them with better alternatives. Am I investing my energy and attention in reaching people who don’t value my work? If so, then I need to reclaim that energy and put it into a more fruitful channel(s).
Ultimately, I don’t think it’s a good use of my time and energy to wake up at 4:00 in the morning consumed with how I’m going to make it all work. It would be more beneficial to get rest so I can wake up with the energy to keep doing the creative work I love to do while also learning about the “other” piece. Staying awake at night thinking seems like spending frigid days in an uninsulated room and attempting to heat it with a space heater, whereas sleeping is like installing insulation or moving to a room that holds the heat more efficiently.
Realizing this, I called on the angels to guide me – turned it over to them. Then I fell asleep for a couple hours and woke up feeling rested. As I slept, I had a dream in which a little song came to me. The words were: Do what you love without worrying or wondering. It all will be alright. In the dream, I was tapping it out musically, over and over, and then a friend joined in on a hand drum. I was awakened from the dream by the sound of a text from my sister. It seemed that kind of repetition and turning the words into a rhythmic song was necessary for me to remember them upon waking. And the text alert was perfectly timed because I woke up in the middle of the musical repetition.
It seems the angels always deliver when I call on them for help.
Today the temperature is expected to reach 50°F. Above zero. Go figure. But the brief snap of frigid weather provided a new metaphor. And when I find myself becoming impatient with the pace at which things are moving, I look out the window at the river that appears frozen solid and am reminded that, down below the surface, things are moving along just fine.
© 2016 Susan Meyer. All rights reserved. To use any or all of this blog post, include this exactly: Susan Meyer (SusanTaraMeyer.com) is a photographer, writer, clutter coach, feng shui consultant, and mindfulness mentor whose work is infused with a deep interest in the nature of mind and appreciation of the natural world. She lives on the Hudson River in Upstate New York.