Head Space

Usually I don't mind a logistical challenge, and I am well served right now with the upcoming summer retreat (which I will still tag as the intensive, as it has been known in years past). Yesterday I was busy setting up a list of participants for the one-day sitting on Saturday, along with their various requirements, alongside a similar but subtly different list of the retreat participants and their commitment levels, which I categorised as 'full', 'fullish', 'morning and evening', 'morning' and 'limited', followed by their prospects for the sesshin at the end. This I enjoyed. What got my blood temporarily boiling was trying to reformat a previous schedule - a Word document - to reflect the schedules we are going to be following. Some combination of table and column quirks on Word which, even with all the formatting marks shown, I could still not understand, made the whole thing take four times longer than it needed, and is the kind of thing that has often brought about the wish to throw the computer out of the window (if anyone has the knowledge and patience to instruct me on this at a time when I am less busy, I would be most grateful). If you look back through all the times I have written about working on one-day sittings, my mood levels on the day have depended largely on the co-operation of the technology at hand.
In the midst of this, I do find it hard to switch my attention whole-heartedly to something else - even in zazen I am often unravelling little related puzzles and remembering that we needed a doorwatch for this morning, that I should email Teah to see what she wants to do for noon service, and whether we should do the meal chants for our silent meals. Nonetheless, I also spent a couple of hours this afternoon at a meeting planning for the Soundwave concert on August 25th, which promises to be every bit as fabulous as the Bold Italic event last year.
Today I will be wrapping up the lists, and also trying to find some space to think about the ceremonies involved in the August 13th anniversary celebration, for which I might be wearing many hats - ino, photographer, sound recorder.
I was typing this before going to bed, and then the power went out in the whole block. Luckily it was not quite dark out, and a few residents were milling about downstairs wondering if there was aything we could do. Typing the end of this by the glow of my bicycle light, it seemed that going to bed was the most sensible idea.