Mindful.

I'm sitting in the car outside a random house waiting for my daughter to finish a music lesson. There is something coming up so she had hire an accompanist to help her practice. This is in addition to her usual lessons. 

Lots of waiting as a parent. Lots.

Work has been stressful. Most of my week has been helping other people. Then I go home and try to get some work done, all the other stuff I needed to do that day but could not.

And dealing with a little smugness with a sprinkle of rudeness. That is hard to take some days.

A year or so ago I started looking into the big idea of mindfulness. One strategy that I learned about was listening to sounds. Try to just concentrate on just one sound, nothing else. Just that one. Then add in a second, consciously hold both sounds simultaneously. 

Hold two sounds is really hard.

After doing that for a while everything just relaxes.

Sitting in the car now with the windows down a bit. Just holding two or three bird songs in my head. Some days it is really hard but it always helps clear my mind.