Best Gift of 2009

Gwen Bell asks the following question for today's prompt: What's a gift you gave yourself this year that has kept on giving?

I could be repetitive here and say it was the happiness and peace of mind that my focus on practice brought about, but I don't like repetition nor do I see the point of repetition in blogland.

This question can be taken figuratively or literally, of course. Maybe the best gift was letting go or maybe it was a new coffee pot.

I am going to take this prompt more literally and talk about two things I spent money on that were for me. The first, which rings in at less than five dollars, is this coffee cup. It sounds silly, I know, but there's something about drinking coffee out of a mug that is both pretty and that also happens to fit nicely into your freakishly small hands. It's a gift that I appreciate every morning when I take that first sip of steaming hot coffee.

The second was a retreat, but not a meditation retreat. On my weekend birthday, three of my four best girlfriends and I attended a scrapbooking retreat at Saint Mary's retreat center in Virginia City. This was a special gift for me for a number of reasons: I got to spend quiet time with my close friends, I met some cool people, I got a lot of scrapbooking done, and I discovered the very cool place that is Saint Mary's. I scampered back to Dharma Zephyr to tell them about this place, since we just recently lost our gorgeous retreat center. They were already onto the site, which means we're going to have at least a couple retreats there in 2010. It's such a cool, old place, complete with ghost stories and creaking hallways, and it's surrounded by rolling fields of brush, which makes it incredibly quiet and relaxing.

My goal for 2010 is to do a residential retreat, but if none work out for me, I just may rent a room at Saint Mary's for a weekend and do my own, personal meditation retreat.

2009 shopping

I am still following Gwenn Bell's Best of 2009 blog prompts. Today's is shopping - where did you spend most of your money? I hate to say it, even though I work very hard to nix the Starbucks habit during my low-impact months, I always end up working my way back to regular Starbucks lattes. It's not a daily habit, but it's pretty darn close.

My coffee addiction doesn't really bother me; however, not only is Starbucks a waste of money, but it's also a garbage-producing machine. Think about all those green and white (or red this time of year) cups that fill our landfills because of people like me.

Still, there's something very comforting about sitting at my desk at work or on the couch while I'm reading to my kids or at my computer desk while holding a nice, hot latte.

I read about this study where they told people they were coming in for a survey. At the elevator entrance, they had a girl standing with a clipboard who took their names and basic demographic information before they were to head upstairs to the actual study. Unbeknownst to the participants, the study was actually taking place there. For half the people, she held a hot drink and would ask them to hold it while she wrote down information. The other half were asked to hold her cold drink. Once upstairs, they were asked what they thought about the person at the elevator - was she friendly, warm, outgoing, etc.? Those who were asked to hold the hot cup were much more like to see her as a friendly, outgoing and caring person than those who held the cold cups thought she was.

That study resonated with me because I really feel more calm and in a weird way kind of safe when I hold a hot cup in my hands. It's as much about the experience as it is about the taste or the caffeine. That's why the travel mugs don't really cut it - because they insulate too well.

Lots of silly rationalization for my sloppy habit. That's what blogging is all about, right?