This is just a brief post, to mainly say… YAAAAAAAY!
After a year of hard work, culminating in the last three months of research, reading, writing and editing, it’s all done! I submitted my final dissertation this week, and so closed this latest chapter of my life. Goodbye student life!
In the midst of the dissertation storm, with only snippets written and a mountainous 15000-word cohesive whole yet to be created, maybe now is a good time to tell you just how wonderful I’m feeling about it all! After all, the focus of this blog is to teach you about and perhaps even encourage you to try the practice of chanting nam myoho renge kyo. What better way to do that than to share real stories about how it affects my life?
So today marks 3 months exactly until the big departure – flights are officially booked so it’s really happening!
The last couple of weeks have also served as a glorious preview of life in the tropics. With the sun beating down and London temperatures reaching a whopping 36 degrees, I was lucky enough to be able to spend some time outdoors to soak it up. I have plenty of reading to do for my Masters dissertation, and where better to do that than spread out on a picnic blanket under a tree in the park? The sticky heat combined with the solitude of study felt to me like a sneak peek of what my life might be like in Thailand. Surrounded by beauty, the sounds of nature, lots of people around to watch and wonder about, but not so many that it felt crowded. What a way to spark the sensation of anticipation for this life I’m setting out on!
Yesterday, the beautiful #beinghappiness coach Gail M. Schock posted this advice on her Facebook page:
Okay so today people…
Take
It
Easy
New Moon, expect lots of travel madness, cancelled meetings, teariness, perhaps even a little distress. This isn’t you, it’s the pull of the water.
My suggestion? Laugh a lot. Enjoy a salt bath. Enjoy the ride and see where the day takes you xxx
I must admit, I don’t know very much about the moon and stars and all that, it’s one of the aspects of spiritual living that has never really resonated too deeply with me, so I pretty much dismissed this one off hand and kept scrolling.
And then everything turned upside down.
I had a little epiphany last night. Little epiphanies are not unusual in my little over-thinking head, as you’ll come to know if you stick with me. Last night’s epiphany concerned this blog and this very post. For it had struck me that since that little ditty of a “First Post” below, I’ve struggled to start producing actual content, to keep some momentum going by continuing – or commencing, rather – to actually write. Ideas keep popping into my head and snippets find their way into the running draft email I use for taking note, but I’ve avoided taking those snippets to the next level by expanding them into actual blog posts. Or even just the one, as would suffice to start.
Ex-programmer,
starts chanting
nam myoho renge kyo,
wakes up,
quits the day job,
studies religious stuff,
goes to paradise,
explores the universe.
This is my journey, spiritual and literal.
