monday enthusiasm

i often wake up on monday morning, full of energy, ready to face the week head on. it generally helps if there is sunshine. but monday mornings, i am full of ideas and full of enthusiasm. i always make a list for the week. oddly, i seldom refer to it as the week progresses, but i do often complete the majority of the items on it - somehow the act of making the list hones my focus. and odin knows i need that.

i think my reading of crossing the unknown sea has me feeling especially empowered and enthusiastic this morning. the book is a deep philosophical musing on the nature of work and how it shapes our identity.  i think the writer i can most compare david whyte to is alain de botton and his musings on architecture and travel. his words leave me fortified and feeling brave.

"whenever we attempt something difficult there is always a sense that we have to wake some giant slumbering inside ourselves, some greater force as yet hidden from us. we look for better work by first looking for a better image of ourselves. we stir this inner giant to life in order to find the strength to live out the life we want for ourselves." 

"to wake the giant inside ourselves, we have to be faithful to our own eccentric nature and bring it out into conversation with the world." 

i mentioned this book the other day and how i felt i picked it up at precisely the time i needed the words contained within, and then whyte said that himself, "a time when paths cross at exactly the moment when both writer and reader are ready to know something of the territory through which they have passed and a glimpse of the unknown future which might lie ahead." 

on a sunny monday morning, i feel an incredible impatience and unbearable exuberance for whatever that unknown future holds. and the strength and the will to shape it myself.