"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." - John Lennon

Just as I was planning a quiet summer with plenty of time to contemplate and reflect, to do some DIY that could help me practice remaining present with everyday tasks, life surprised me. I heard of a part-time vacancy at the adult education college where I do my language teaching work. It is a great place to work, with friendly people who I already know and respect. And it is a step up in my 18-year teaching career. It gives me the job security and the kind of structure in my life that I have never had but that could potentially be very good for me. I've spent a lot of my time this week working on my application.

But still I am conflicted. If I got that job, there is a real danger that I would let that 3-days-a-week job take over all of my life. It would be hard work, and I would have to do some of my teaching on top of that. So it could easily turn into a 4-day-a-week job with a 5th day where I feel tired and don't get around to doing much, and a full weekend of social commitments. Which would leave no time for my relationship with my goddess. The devotion she is asking for would wear very, very thin.

It strikes me that this is a very old conflict, a tug-of-war between the part of me that loves sitting in quiet contemplation and the part of me that longs to do something meaningful in the world. With this possible job coming up, I feel it more keenly. Last week, I tried to make an image of what I was feeling, and drew a crow and a snake fighting. Claws grip and fangs strike; it actually looks quite powerful, and expresses beautifully the conflicted feeling inside me.

After a week of letting the image sink in, I have learned that the snake is my creative life force. It longs to express its jewelled beauty and to dance with the world. The crow is my inner visionary, a gatekeeper between the worlds. If these two things could find peace and a way of working together, who knows what wonders would occur? Crow could bring images from the Otherworld, that Snake could express in this world, in ever-renewing ways. As it is, they seem to think they are enemies, each other's opposites and opponents.

I have felt this conflict, off and on, for many years. Everybody probably feels it, but it ties me in knots. The conflict means that I am never happy: feeling guilty when I am still and feeling overwhelmed when I am active. It means I never get much of anything done, which is deeply frustrating.

It's not that I don't know what to do. I need to set boundaries so that both aspects of myself have time and space to do what they do best. And I am very, very bad at that. I allow myself to get easily distracted. When I'm being quiet and allow my vision to unfold, other things often call for my attention. And when I am busy doing something, I distract myself with facebook, or the latest news on Viggo Mortensen. And then wonder where the day went.

I think the goddess is wise. She is asking me to do exactly what is right for me. I need to develop my devotion to life. And devotion means being present. I need to breathe with this feeling of conflict. And with the guilt and the feelings of being overwhelmed when they arrive. And I need to be present when I am still with the goddess and just as present when I write or teach or paint the windows. Allowing everything to be as it is, without fighting it, will bring me peace. And hopefully it will bring peace to the crow and the snake inside me.

Being present isn't easy. I find it particularly hard to do when I'm mentally engaged with something, like writing that job application. Before I know it, my brain is spinning stories about what could happen and what could go wrong and I find it hard to sleep at night. But even then I try to breathe, to be there with the turmoil in my head and to find the space around it that is still, that is welcoming of every aspect of life, and that is filled with the presence of the goddess.

I am learning.