Recentering

I guess I am still getting my calm back after all that tension.

The bar exam is over and please don't ask me how it went. I guess maybe there are people who come out of that exam feeling like they knew the relevant law, wrote coherent essays and picked the best answer choice rather than the second best (or the "sucker choice," as the BarBri instructors like to call it). I am not one of those people. Taking the bar exam showed me in blinding detail just how much I didn't know. Now I just need to hope there were a sufficient number of exam-takers who knew even less.

We spent the weekend on Cape Cod, at Shawn's adviser's summer house. We ate delicious fresh food out on the back deck by the garden, I pored over cookbooks for hours, and I started reading The Secret Life of Bees, which got me so hooked that I'm about to leave for the library so I can finish it. I continue to be amazed at how deeply I'm sleeping. I guess I'm making up for lost peace of mind.

The things I thought I would want to do when I finished the bar were mostly mindless, like watching lots of TV and wandering around the mall. But those are the sorts of things you crave when your mind is totally occupied and taxed. Now, with brain waves to spare, I want to do things that fit in that sweet spot between total attentiveness and meditation: bake bread, sit in the shade and write poems, go for walks with the dog, knit a sweater from a new pattern. I'm going to let my intuition take the lead for a while.