Bachelor Weekend

Wilbert is on a business trip to Germany for a few days, so I get to spend the whole weekend by myself. After making breakfast for him, putting together a little care package for his train journey and dropping him off at the station, I came home and didn’t quite know what to do with myself. I have historically used eating and shopping to combat boredom (and any number of other uncomfortable feelings), and I had to be very vigilant for that yesterday. I managed to stay inside and do useful things like cleaning the stove until after the shops closed, which was a major victory in overcoming my ego patterns. I put Oprah & Eckhart Tolle on my iPhone (if you haven’t checked this out yet, download it for free on iTunes) and slowly wandered in the direction of our local Japanese restaurant in another part of town (about 2.4km each way). Because my heel isn’t fully healed, I took it sort of easy and didn’t rush, but that went really well with what I was listening to. I realized on the way how much of my local environment I had actually missed out on by not walking more over the last 10 years, because I discovered some interesting new things I’d DRIVEN by a million times but never really paid attention to before. Like a little war monument about 2 blocks from my house that commemorates four Dutch men who were killed on that spot by the Nazis during WW II. The podcast I was listening to only heightened the experience of living in the moment and noticing (but not judging) the nature around me. It was a nice walk. Burned a few calories too.

I usually hate eating alone, so I brought a friend with me, my MacBook Air, and ended up eating sashimi and Japanese vegetables while chatting online with a friend in the U.S. who has also had lap-band surgery and has a gay son. It was a nice chat and I felt like I’d been out to dinner with someone. :-)

Afterwards I walked home, listened to more Eckhart & Oprah and came across this beautiful scene while crossing the bridge (the photo doesn’t do it justice), and right afterwards had one of those ZING moments listening to the podcast. Won’t go into too much detail, but I essentially learned the the origin of my materialistic nature. Doing something about it is a different story; not so clear on that part yet. :-)

Had a good night’s sleep, and am now going to get some breakfast, jump into the car, go to the Keukenhof flower gardens and do some photography, and then come home and go out to dinner with some friends, so it should be a pretty fabulous day!