Once again it is five am, the coffee is filling the house with its dark and earthy aroma, the fire is going and I am sitting in my slightly soiled chair, thinking about silly things and contemplating my life. I was shopping yesterday afternoon for a few things for my new place. I got to the coffee section and was overwhelmed with the number of choices. How am I supposed to pick one without being a coffee expert?   I like coffee, medium roast to be exact, but even the choices of medium roast numbered over 20. An entire section of shelving filled with colourful packages and the brand I like wasn’t on the shelf. Great another trip to another store! I order Americano at the local coffee shop where it has the catchy name of V0S 1N0, which used to be the local postal code. Now I wasn’t sure how to pronounce that so I ordered a medium postal code but this threw the baristas off so they told me to order an Americano. Even ordering a cup of coffee can be complicated. I don’t visit Starbucks often but when I do I always think up a new name for them to put on my cup, to see if they can spell it or just to see if they are really listening. Last week my name was Aradia, which is Greek for the goddess of witches. A girl has to have some fun even when ordering coffee.

I don’t like complicated things. They make my head hurt. I don’t have time for complicated relationships, IKEA furniture with its twelve page instruction sheet for a small table, or a morning facial routine that contains five products and fifteen steps to a more youthful glow. I am the wash, tone and moisturize girl. No muss and no fuss, that is who I am. Now that is not to say that I do not make things more complicated than they need to be, especially when I don’t think things through beforehand. Sometimes just jumping in with no forethought can complicate the hell out of my life. I don’t always think about the small numerous details. I decided to move before I sold my house. Simple right? Wrong, there are insurance issues, which require me to sleep in my old house four nights a week or it is considered vacant and the insurance doesn’t cover a multitude of important things. I also need two of almost everything if I am going to live in two places. Didn’t really think that through before I signed the lease. All I knew was that I felt like I couldn’t breathe living in the house with everything that has happened and I could not move on with my life until I lived somewhere else. So I found a new place to live and didn’t think about all the small details. The woman who is allergic to complications just complicated the hell out of her own life.

The other thing I am thinking about is synchronicity. According to Wikipedia, synchronicity is a concept, first explained by psychiatrist Carl Jung, which holds that events are “meaningful coincidences” if they occur with no causal relationship, yet seem to be meaningfully related. Life is full of it, at least it is for me. Sometimes I do not recognize it until after the fact, but it happens. I was heading to my new place the other day to wait for deliveries and when I got there a turtle was blocking the driveway. I have lived on this island for over twenty years, have four ponds and have never seen a turtle, so this got my attention. So I park my car and approach the turtle wondering what to do. As I pick him up his head and limbs retract into his shell and he produces a loud hissing noise. I had no idea that turtles hissed! He was not as heavy as I expected either. So I moved him onto the grass and parked in the driveway. Every time I went outside I checked on him and on my last trip he was gone.   He hadn’t moved more than a foot in an hour and then in ten minutes he had completely disappeared and I looked for him in a ten foot radius of where I had left him.

So I thanked the universe for my turtle encounter and contemplated what message the turtle had for me. The first things that came to mind were, slow and steady and home is where your heart is. The universe has been slowing me down in many ways for months and this was one more way to get its point across, and a rather obvious one. That’s the nice thing about life if you don’t get the message the first time it gets presented in a number of ways until you do. So, it also doesn’t matter where I live, I am the home for my soul and a house is not my home. When I viewed this suite the first thing I noticed about it was I felt centred and grounded so I am taking the turtle as a sign that this new place will be good for me. The universe knows that I pay close attention to the animals so what better way for it to welcome me to my new place and send a message than to put an animal in my path. Thanks Universe!

I pay attention to the signs but have trouble thinking about all the small details and intricacies when making decisions. The world around me literally shouts and I only have to listen more closely. So, stop talking and listen, slow down, pay attention, look at the world around you, the signs are everywhere. Or don’t, the choice is up to you. I choose to see the synchronicities of the people I encounter, the animals that cross my path, the traffic jams and obstacles that are put in front of me. They all teach me something about myself and my relationship to the world. What messages has the universe sent you lately? Are you paying attention? Let me know, I would love to hear from you.

Peace and love to all

Donna