Ahhhhh! I see.

I'm now officially 65 years old. I have been here or somewhere 65 entire years. That's something I did not think would happen. I'm come to be right where I'm supposed to be in exactly 65 years and I never expected to be in such a nice place. I still tend to want to drag other people along to where I am which they resist and which I find frustrating. But that's also supposed to be. I know that because it is.

I just finished my version of meditation. At least the type of meditation I do every morning for a few minutes. I am re-establishing that in my routine and I'm getting better at it. I use a biofeedback deal called Muse that reads a general EEG pattern and reflects it to me in the form of sound. It takes a while to establish the best pattern and I'm getting better at it again.

It's important to do it every day, when is up to you, but I find making it part of the morning routine works best for me.

While I do it I try to clear my mind of all thoughts but of course, that doesn't happen at least in the complete sense. What happens is, I focus on my breathing and then my mind wanders and then I notice it wandering and I refocus back onto my breathing and then my mind wanders again, and so on. That is the pattern and as time passes I spend a little more time focusing on my breathing and less wandering. But while it wanders, it generally moves quickly and efficiently and draws some amazing conclusions, at least sometimes.

In those little side trips, my mind comes quickly to see and understand things that have eluded me for long periods of time, decades, sometimes longer. Things become apparent and in retrospect, it's difficult for me to understand why I couldn't see them before. They're like those revelations that come to people under the influence of hallucinogens, but these are true. Nonetheless, they are revelatory and add a great deal to my overall understanding of things.

Whilst I meditated a bit ago, I understood that my mistake in the glazing of the Christmas tiles was to put clear glaze on them at all. It wasn't necessary. The "paint" was the glaze and would have been all I needed before the firing. As long as the tile was covered with the "paint" it would have been fine. Of course the tiles were milky, the clear glaze was never going to become completely clear. Re-firing them will not fix this problem.

I understand that now. What a maroon!

I also came to understand how damaged my birth family was. I grew up believing that it wasn't or at least it had clear anchors in it. But it didn't. I'm pretty sure my family was just another disaster and there are many like it. I'm also sure there are good strong families and I hope that I haven't hurt my kids and wife with my personality.

I'd like to get a couple useful things done today. I'm going to try to fix a kitchen stool and get the other tiles out to glaze/paint.

More later,