This beautiful morning I sit here listening to the lake water lap up against the shore, the fisherman in the wooden kayak is whistling a little song and Iza is quietly breathing as she sleeps. Usually I am up before the sun working or meditating, but today ZZ (our nickname for Iza) is a little bit sick with a cold and she woke up at 5am crying. So we spent some time with her to calm her down and get her back to sleep. Then Rache went back to work and I did some meditation. I will refer to meditation from here on out as Zazen, which is a Zen form of meditation.
So hopefully you are reading our blog posts regularly and will know what I am talking about in the future! Right now, as we go into the last month and a half of our stay here at Casa Paloma in San Marcos, Guatemala, Rache and I are doing our usual race to the finish to try to secure our next place to stay. It’s a drag and we always get stressed out around this time.
First of all, we are trying to find a place to stay here at Lake Atitlan for a year which is not easy. We love it here but want to get to know it better while we decide if we want to make this our home forever. We are pretty sure we do, but moving to another country is a huge step and a lot has to be evaluated. A big problem is that we are going into the major tourist season here, the dry season, and most of the places are already rented. We are finding some things though and are confident we will secure something soon. Hopefully the owner of this house we are in now will agree to work with us on either buying it or renting it long term. We truly love it here.
Second of all, we are trying to find a relatively affordable apartment in NYC to rent as we have to be back there for a month in October. We have all of our stuff in storage there that we have to go through and Rache and I need to network in the city. We are looking forward to going back but it is really more stress to make it happen than we need right now. Should we bring our nanny? Should we exceed our budget to find a decent place? Should we stay outside of the city and commute in? Too many questions to work out!
Actually we really want to just stay here, stay put. I think we both truly feel like we are done moving around!
But the question always creeps back in; Are we in the right place for us? Should we do some more traveling, to India and China? We both love to travel so much and I could do business in those countries and Rache could go to her annual yoga retreat in India. Somebody smack us!
My Zen teacher in New York always talks about not worrying about where to go and what to do, especially when doing zazen. These two things always seem to pop up in our minds and cause mental strife. The idea is to just make a decision and be happy with it. Why do we have such a hard time doing this?! As I said in a previous post, decisions can drive you crazy! Our situation is kind of unique in that we both can work anywhere as long as we have an internet connection. Of course many people have places of work to go to and dont have the option of moving around. So they just learn to love where they live. Many are happy where they live, no matter where they are, that is the best way to be. But others are not happy being where they are and always wish to be somewhere else or to travel and experience new things. The grass is always greener type thing.
So now, The Brand Fam is right smack in the middle and we are deciding what to do next. Fortunately we know what we want and that we want to settle down soon. Hopefully things will work out for us here and we will finally find a place to call home, or maybe, at least, home base!
Keep reading to find out… I think things will happen for us soon!