This photo is actually about the size of a business card, from a page of "cigarette photos" purchased at an outdoor book market in Havana.  In the 40s, if you bought a package of cigarettes in Cuba, they came with these small photos that people collected.  This is one of my favorite images.

The sky today is covered with soft, grayish clouds, the kind of
weather that makes me feel incredibly sloth-ish, as if the cloud layer
is a giant blanket begging me to crawl under it and just sleep the day
away.  But there are always tasks to accomplish, and every day this
week I have woken up committed to the idea of wrapping up everything
that has been lingering on my to do list since I got home from Japan,
and every day I have barely managed to get one or two things finished
mainly thanks to a number of internet-related distractions.  I
sometimes amaze my very self by the fact that my ability to be totally
focused and committed exists alongside a propensity to distraction that
is equally as strong.  Just this morning as I was doing my usual
morning kichen clean-up, I saw that my little bamboo plant wasn’t
looking very happy and decided on the spot to dump it all out and
re-pot it, washing off all the little rocks it lives in and trimming
its yellow leaves.  It needed to be done, yes, but right then and there?

These contradictions and anamolies exist in all facets of my life.
I believe in living in a place of gratitude yet I am capable of griping
and complaining quite a bit.  I want to approach any situation,
relationship or experience from a place of acceptance, but my
judgemental high horse is always standing by ready for me to climb
aboard.  I want to live without expectations but sometimes obsess over
things that don’t go as well as I think they could.

In all of these inconsistencies, in my day to day life,
relationships and work my goal is not try to smother the side of the
coin that I deem "negative", but to examine those behaviors and
attitudes that don’t fit in with the kind of person I strive to be.  I
do believe in gratitude and these thoughts are part of every one of my
days, yet lately I have been letting out a list of complaints a mile
long about one specific situation I am struggling with.  I am being
judgemental, not very compassionate and rather self-absorbed.  This
isn’t who I want to be, so what am I to do about it?  Berate myself?
Punish myself?  Keep complaining and chalk it up to "it is what it
is?"  Or stop, shut the hell up, and take a look at why I feel
compelled to put so much focus on this particular situation when there
are so many other positive things I can give my attention to.  When I
sit still with this particular struggle, it is actually pretty easy to
see where the angst is coming from.  The good news is that instead of
it getting me down it is helping me realize that my reactions make
quite a lot of sense in light of other totally unrelated
circumstances in my life.  By understanding it I can begin to move away
from the negative behavior and carry with me one more bit of insight
and understanding that can help me through the depths down the road.

I don’t believe in blaming myself for everything or taking
responsibility for things that are not my doing, but I do believe in
keeping the focus on my own behavior and being honest with myself
rather than expending energy to point my finger at the rest of the
world for whatever I happen to be struggling with.   The world, and all
the people in it, is going to give you what it is going to give you.
We each have the ability to take in what we want and try not to absorb
what we don’t and the only control we have over any of it is how we
handle it, how we decide, as individuals, to move through whatever
minefield is in front of us.

Or maybe, just maybe, in some of these situations, the mine field is
actually a open plain of sunflowers, wanting nothing more than for us
to run through it wildly with our heads thrown back and our arms open
wide.

I wake up
And the day feels
Broken
I tilt my head
I’m trying to get an angle
‘Cause the evening
I’ve always longed for
It could still happen

There’s too much
Clinging
To peak
There’s too much
Pressure

It’s Not Up To You, Bjork