Today I  read Barbara's  inspiring blog post at  bkb2012.  Thanks Barbara!

The meandering stage, she calls it. 

I say revel in the meandering, newbies!  In my own experience,  it was an essential stage in recovering from the overwhelmed I-am-new-at-WA stage that I plowed thru with such blind faith. After working thru most of this challenging first stage  I became able  to meander, and that's when I realized I was changing.  

Here's how it went .   There I was, still plowing along with basic material in WA, still feeling glassy-eyed, still reading stuff several times over and hoping it would stick---------------and then one day WOW, something I was reading reminded me of something I had studied a few days before !  I was making links :-)  actual links in my mind :-)

I went back and forth ....I would feel overwhelmed again and had to remind myself that this is part of the learning curve.  I had just seen a glimmer of daylight so I knew more light was coming.  It was really important for me to hold firm in those moments. I had to believe (blind faith time again) that this was not just a glimmer that would disappear. With persistence, more light would come. A whole bunch of people had done this successfully before me, and I am joining in with them. I will not give up.  I will succeed. And I will  succeed really well. 

Barbara's post reminded me of something  I did right from the start.  I bookmarked a bunch of tutorials etc. as I read them, with the funny feeling that I didn't really understand them well enough yet to actually use them...but that I would later on...

...so I went back  when the vocabulary was making sense and my mind was beginning to build  links.  What a gold mine!  Bookmarking as a newbie and returning later is a great practice.

 I wandered around, happy as a child playing with a new toy on the beach.

HERE'S THE KEY TO WHAT WAS HAPPENING. True, I got a whole new bunch of info linked together in  my head and I could begin to use it.  Excellent in itself. Far more importantly though...

MY MIND WAS ACTUALLY CHANGING.  I was developing new capacities within myself and they had become mine. Actually mine!

IT IS WITH THAT AWARENESS THAT I LET MYSELF MEANDER.  I look at my  mind as it changes, from multiple perspectives.  One is, I have  been a physician my whole adult life,  a psychiatrist/psychoanalyst for adults and for kids. I love participating in the process of growth/change.  I think  the neurons take awhile to form new links. I think "sleeping on"  a problem often moves you toward a solution, especially if you form the intent before you go to sleep. And I think that the relaxed-while-awake state of meandering is valuable to us human beings..and yup.......sure enough...

THE MEANDERING ACTUALLY HELPED ME.  That glassy-eyed overwhelmed feeling went away. I relaxed. I got excited. I realized I can do this IM stuff.

SO NOW I CAN FOCUS SO MUCH BETTER.   These days  when I open my computer, there's that delight of anticipation.   I come at it with a clearer mind. I am the same woman I was, but I'm not........What will discover today ???What will I put to use??? What will I create that is  new???

NOW I CAN DEVELOP MY FOCUSING CAPACITIES .  Like other capacities, gotta work at them in ways that help. There's some basic practices I follow, that bring me cool results .  There's others I know I can do better at, and doing them  will be worth it,   and a bunch more to discover as I go along...

THAT'S ANOTHER BLOG POST for another day soon. Maybe more than one.  This can be useful fun.