I did that. ME!!

I've been working for one month now - WORKING! As in paid full-time proper employment-pending-probation-period. Bit of a shock ... starting the first real job of my life. It's been pretty full-on so far and am just finding some slippery ground, which is so much better than free-falling. Was catching a pmv (Public Motor Vehicle AKA road hazard; pollution emitter; road-rage inducer; life-threatening mode of public transport) down along the beach into town this morning and I was felling pretty low ... the usual pattern of ricebag-bashing re my slow & ineffective brain ... when some derivative of techno-music on the bus started to permeate my muddling brain and triggered off some thing ... and I started to smile ... because I remembered - I WALKED/HITCHED ACROSS TIBET!! I did that. Me! I did it illegally. 1200 kilometres. Last year I did it when noone said I could do it. I camped in barren yak hunting territory; I trekked the holiest bhuddist koras (paths); I walked around Chinese checkpoints; I escaped arrest twice; I made pacts of friendship with Tibetans ... and even the Chinese in Tibet, with whom I thought I never could; I bathed in rushing ice-melt and fished in vagabond rivers, lined with the silt flowing down from the 8 highest mountains in the world; hitching rides on pilgrimmage trucks; stealing rides with Chinese army officials!; walking with yak herders and their sons across vast brown plains dusted with a dying light ... I did that. Me! And so much more. More even than I thought possible.

So I began this day in the office with a smile. My first start with a real smile-from-my-soul, the kind you're not conscious of ... after my first month of smiling-on-purpose, the kind that can only be made on purpose.

It was such a liberating thing - just those 2 minutes of free-smiling

Everything does not seem to massive now. Nor so heavy. Yesterday I just started getting on with it ... and I am. [Mental note not to be so hard on ricebag.]