November 23^rd: Slow & Steady

Before I go any further, I want to acknowledge that I missed a day- already! And though I could formulate a million reasons why, the truth is…I just plain forgot. Lately, I’ve been writing in a willy-nilly fashion, sometimes in the morning, sometimes at night. I guess I thought I wrote something yesterday, but I did not. My friend Peter checked in on me to make sure I was okay (he thought I must be dead, I guess, since I didn’t write.) When he found out I was okay, he suggested that I write a piece about time travel, and I guess try to convince you all that I was writing from yesterday? I figured just admitting I forgot would suffice. But thanks, Peter! 😊

Okay, now, back to the other stuff.

So, today, I was given the rare gift of calm- a quality I know almost nothing about in any quantity at all. Sure, I have moments of it here and there, but today, almost all day, I have been utterly…calm.

I did not feel the pervasive drive to go, go, go that I normally do, but I wasn’t just sitting around procrastinating and feeling miserable, either. I actually got a LOT done, but all of the crazy pressure I normally put on myself was absent. It was great. I don’t have a clue why I felt this way or where it came from, but boy am I grateful.

And now that I know what that feels like, it will be easier for me to recreate it, you know? Looking around at my spotless (well, almost) living room, listening to the dishwasher do its thing off in the kitchen, and knowing that I did all the things I did today with not a bit of my frantic attitude ruining it. What a breakthrough!

Reminds me of that old story about the fox and the hare…well, not really. I can’t exactly remember that story fully. But I do remember the saying “Slow and steady wins the race.”

There might be something to that after all.

My hope for you, if you are reading this, is that you are given the gift of discovering something new about yourself. If you are, like me, a relentlessly driven mad-person, then I hope you wake up tomorrow and suddenly find yourself calm. If you are grouchy, may you wake up happy and joyful. If you are lazy and unmotivated, may you wake up energetic and ready to go. All of those things really are inside of each of us. Sometimes they just need to be discovered.