When I’m feeling blue, I just remember this bag of indigo. I think we know who comes out on top here.

Today I woke up and started September off on the right foot, or butt cheek. I meditated for the first time in a while – the start of my personal goal to mediate every day this month inspired by a friend of mine with the same goal.

So the morning started with ease, slow and steady, no rushing, moving with my deep breaths, relishing being up early enough to not only have time to reflect inward before dealing outward, but having time to straighten a little and decide if I liked my new purse that arrived in the mail. I like it.

What I didn’t like so much was arriving to a pretty grim, empty floor after an office-wide move from uptown to downtown. Somehow seniority doesn’t scream window seat and wooden table but instead, pedestrian aisle, masonite and coffee-stained desk. Oh yeah, we also can’t find your chair. See if there’s an extra lying around somewhere, will ya?

A frustrating scramble for a plastic spoon, passive-aggressive group roommate email and a much needed walk to my favorite coffee shop later, I was online completing the application and 135 questions to be considered as a flight attendant. Talk about needing a change of scenery.

What I really wanted was to return to that 10 minutes on my velvet pillow, to center myself, to focus on my breath and to tune in to myself. It’s one of those days that from a bird’s-eye view would not be all that terrible, but combined and continuing, built up like a snowball rolling downhill. The moment that ball crashed and all was dispersed was when I could find myself on my mat again later that evening. A yin and yang practice of heating and cooling to restore me to a state of being I had found 12 hours earlier.

Perhaps the expectation that a day would go smoothly if I gave myself 10 minutes in the morning threw me off as well. It’s not so much “I did that meditation thing – things are supposed to work now,” but more of a “here is a tool I can use when I have days like today.” After all, it is a practice, not a perfect.

Today, Wednesday, has been a bit more sober in the sense that it’s gone less haywire. I even had classical music blasting out of a 5th story building as I walked peacefully back to the office with my coffee. Granted, there was also a homeless man shouting outside a Burger King across the way, but all in all, Wednesday wins.

I think it’s time for a gratitude list of this week’s other little victories:
Successfully made caramelized onions
Amélie soundtrack on repeat
Bought light bulbs for salvaged lamps
Chocolate hazelnut butter. That’s it.
Context-appropriate emojis
Starting Aziz Ansari’s Modern Romance
Watching a new Hugh Grant film in 4 parts
Cavity-free dentist appointment
Retail therapy after said dentist appointment
Returning home to a made bed
Rain machines to put me to sleep
Coffee. Err’ day.

Hope your hump day goes without a bump! And if your day has hiccups, tell it to go home, it’s drunk. Start anew, start with the breath, and maybe a bum shouting over classical music will bubble up some levity when small things have us weighed down.