Thursday, May 20: prolific expression
“In the human sexual arena, roles can be quickly reversed.”
Now I am starting to doubt this project.
I’ve had a couple of days of hard-fought short pieces, but this day seems to be demanding a longer one.
The meditation seems, um, random?
I have about 10 minutes to write this—yoga at 7.
So, what if I just write for 10 minutes and see what happens? It is 6:37 on my favorite day of the week—Thursday. My grades are submitted (are you tired of hearing about that?) and my sister arrives from Denver today. Today is filled with a lot of things I like—7 am yoga, a 10am work meeting (with people I like), haircut, and a paid focus group. At 3pm, my favorite time of the day, I plan on going to Starbucks and getting some kind of giant sweet and creamy drink on the way to getting said sister from O’Hare. It is a good day! Favorite things on a favorite day with favorite people. Did I plan things this way? Well, kind of, but a lot of it just happened because I have a lot of options for good things in my life right now. I don’t really have to orchestrate because all of the instruments sound good together anyway. We all just do our thing.
Yesterday, I was reflecting on a feeling I had when I first started this blog. I was leaving my terrible, evil, high-paying job and trying to figure out what to do with all my glorious newfound time. Well, I filled it with favorite things: yoga, running, shopping (the window variety—just left the job), coffee with friends, drawing with my daughter, watching the boy play video games, and creating a blog. I thought to myself, I want my life to be filled with pleasant complications like having to text a friend that I would be late for our meet-up because my yoga class ran long. Not that I always need to have coffee with friends following an extra long span of stretching, but I want that feeling of having so many things in my day that I enjoy that my greatest struggle is showing up on time. Today, I have it.
(OK—it’s 8:57. Yoga went long, and then I dawdled. I was going to get more coffee, but the pot was cold.)
Sometimes we burden ourselves with busy. Honestly, I think we want to—busy is a sign of status. If you are busy, people want what you’ve got. If you are busy, you are contributing. If you are busy, you don’t have to do anything else. Busy is a way to excuse yourself from just about everything.
And if you are busy with unpleasant stuff, that must mean you’re really important. I read something about status a while back—I think it was during the Upstairs Downstairs revival/Downton Abbey BBC craze—the person with the most keys (like the butler or the woman who is in charge of the household whose title I cannot come up with) may seem like she has the power, but that’s just responsibility. The person with one key really has the power.
It’s just after 9 am and my 10 minutes of writing has spilled over into the time I’d allowed to tidy my desk (yay!) and make more coffee in preparation for my 10 am meeting (also yay). I’m not busy, I’m prolific and expressive. That epigraph about sexual arenas and all that, I’m too busy to deal with.
