I was going to head up to the mountains today with my brother in law but my youngest needs a hand with groceries so I am helping out. I did some drawing a few days ago and with a break in the rain, I might go do some observational drawing locally after helping out. I went to Qi Gong last night and had a great session, we were talking about the trap of desire, and how nature will ensnare you in desire. We talked about sugar, mainly refined sugar and the need to keep away from it as much as possible. So basically we were talking about all of the stuff people love, I must laugh, and we are the killjoys of all the fun stuff but it is pretty sobering, boring for most but interesting. There are always adjustments to be made and we are all trying ways to adjust our habits and hopefully kick out the bad habits but it isn’t any guarantee of success. 

I would not wish my own habits on anyone though, most people would find it boring, yet I feel like I am in on some kind of secret which is typical with this sort of thing. I do have heaps of energy and feel great but it is only because I can compare it to how I felt some years before when I couldn’t leave the house for a week and just sat around with no energy. That was how my holidays used to go, if I had two weeks off, the first week was just sitting at home staring at the wall exhausted. I was talking to a Qi Gong peer who had to convalesce his dying mother for a few years and couldn’t do anything and how he wished he could have kept up his practice during that time. I told him he at least had the comparison and that was what motivates me to keep doing boring stuff again and again, over and over.

If I didn’t experience those lows I never would have been able to compare the highs, although they are not really highs, they are just balanced energy levels if anything. The weather in Sydney has been wet for months, we had a wet pattern of weather which is going to hang around for a few more months but today is a sunny day. There has been bad flooding over the past few months up to and down the coast although worse up north. The clouds are creeping back over at the moment breaking the sunshine but I don’t think it will rain today. It will probably be a scuffle between the sun and the clouds. The weather is getting cooler as well which means you can get a night of great sleep, I like it when it actually does cool down although we had a wet end to Summer and it wasn’t that hot due to all of the rain, yet the humidity was unbearable for a month at least. I don’t like high humidity, it is nothing compared to Guangzhou though which is a wall of humidity.

I had a call this morning from a friend seeing if I could get out to paint today at a wall but we had a chat and I said how my plans had changed anyway and I couldn’t get out. I was also going to have a friend over if my mountains trip didn’t go ahead and have a traditional tea session so everything has been up in the air and then last-minute changes that I didn’t expect. I think that is the current theme, you never know what is around the corner and it is hard to plan anything, things just change suddenly and it is a little unexpected. I don’t think there will be any guarantees for quite a while, everything will be turned on its head, expect the unexpected.