Regularity in face of crazy weather; fasting

While the lower 48 is in the grip of the icy gods, it hit 50 degrees Fahrenheit here yesterday. This photo, taken today, could be from late May.

A couple of weeks ago, a little farther down the same road, a more typical scene.

I was talking about paradoxical pieces of advice for being best self/manifesting destiny/personal development. These two pictures of the same road exemplify a piece of advice on which all the gurus and advisers are unanimous, which seems to contain a paradox within itself:

Have a daily practice. How you start up your day sets the tone for how you move through the day, so be intentional about it.

and--here's the paradox--

The more consistent and stable you are with this practice, the more resilient you'll be when destabilization happens, for whatever reason, and you're prevented from practicing.

(I guess because by repeated practice, you've been diligently building the neural net, and that same net becomes a safety net that protects you from curveballs.)

This advice is sweet to me in several ways. First, because I've had experience of the benefits of a regular practice--the lived experience that life can feel more full of sparkle and opportunity when I live it with that level of intentionality. Second, because one of my favorite quotations from Rumi (Barks's translation, of course, I'm of that generation) says "Submit to a daily practice...Keep knocking, / and eventually the joy inside / will open a window / and look out to see who is there." I tend to think pieces of poetry stick for a reason. Then, because my doctor has been telling me for years now that such regularity is my best medicine against my own inherent instability. It's not that a bipolar person can't maintain a regular practice; it's that a bipolar person must work more diligently than most to maintain such a practice, which is one of her best protections against falling off the rails/the deep end/the face of the earth. Having a check-in first thing in the morning, and taking time to make a note of three or more things I'm grateful for before bed is feeling so good.

And so, when the vista looks like midsummer although it should be midwinter, tune into clues, like the absence of fireweed on the hillside...

...or the fact that the sun is nonetheless very far to the south in the sky...
And even though nature herself is one big curveball right now, stay in that winter, seed, potential energy space. 

I hope my own regularity of practice and prayer can be one small piece of stability to protect this local ecosystem, while bluff-edges become landslides, bugs and buds come out of dormancy, the ground thaws. I hold a piece of true north winter within me, watching that sky-southerly sun.

I've continued to fast twice a week. Twenty-four-hour fasts, dinner through dinner, so not a great long fast. I've been advised because of where my weight is that this isn't the best thing. I've come to agree that I probably shouldn't do it days that I have to drive, especially when the roads aren't good. But it is a form of practice of its own with much to commend it, and I haven't yet been able to convince myself to give it up. I guess one way to talk myself around might be to say that not-fasting is a form of regularity.

I'll make a few more posts about lessons I'm learning right now. And my next post will be about the big decision I was agonizing over and how I finally decided.
Meanwhile, I'll be getting up early for the Future of Nutrition Conference! It runs on East Coast time, 9am-9pm. 9am Eastern is 5am here!