The Roar of the Mitsubishi, the Smell of the Weed

     Early afternoon mood in September. Birds sing. Butterflies flutter. So, so much to do, yet I've found a new way to keep my mind a bit tidier that doesn't involve a miasma of sticky notes or the incessant pop-ups of calendar reminders on the front of my phone. 

     Don't get me wrong; I put appointments and steady series of events into my online calendar. Like the dawning of music composition software having created the ability to pull parts from a score without writing every single part by hand, the Google Calendar has had an equal impact on my life for an appointment made at the doctor's office to appear on my laptop at home. However, I have a new method that really works for me.

     I've downloaded daily planning sheets. There's a space for Today's Intention at the top, Timed Things (appointments) and To Do (tasks) in the middle, a big space in the lower middle with a grid of faint bulletpoints for sketching/ planning/ calculating/ writing a quick cantus firmus or lyric/ poetry/ you name it, and a space for Gratitude at the bottom. If you know me from reading this blog, you know that I have deeply found my gratitude and it's not a quick and flighty thing that I pop off ten in a day, so this goes unfilled on the regular. 

     I am grateful for finding a daily planner that works! Fun fact: Lists become invisible to me.

     I will create a sticky note and put it on my keyboard and start to check off the items therein. Low and behold, the dang thing becomes invisible! So I create another, and then I find the first, but since I couldn't see it before, I just use it to inform the second; perhaps the third. Ad infinitum. They are essentially the same list with little changed but one item. More time is spent trying to organize myself. 

     So I move the sticky note list to the mirror. The toilet. My phone (forget that, that has a disappearing act, too). Thus the miasma of sticky notes.

     I tried the chalkboard. That works for about a day.

     I tried sticky notes with just one item listed. It's essentially a spread-out list. A hazier miasma.

     Just put it ALL in the Google Calendar. Set reminders. That works in that I set reminders like a pro.

     The trouble is that when there are that many reminders, I start missing appointments because those learn the disappearing act, too.

     I had been a fairly mindful soul all along, but my mindfulness had fleeting moments that were frequently interrupted by pleasing other people (so I've thought) and trying to control my life (lol) and just getting lost along the way. 

     Fast forward to now. I have been growing my mindfulness, not by being in the woods constantly with the birds (a favorite), but by being with myself for two minutes and rubbing two fingers together and trying to feel the ridges on both fingers. I've grown my mindfulness by just concentrating on my breathing, not just the breathing, but the temperature of the air as it passes through my nostrils and how much warmer it is when it comes back out, or trying to feel all of my toes on the ground. Two minutes at a time, my mindfulness has grown, really grown. 

     As it has, I've questioned the inner voices that tell me to stay with pain to keep learning and realized that I don't learn from that anymore. Pain teaches me to pull away from the source of pain and grow. We don't stay in the fire, we pull away. As my mindfulness continues to grow, it teaches me that pleasing other people when I have no reason to and no capacity to does not improve my relationship in any way; in fact, it hinders it. And mindfulness has taught me to listen to the wisest part of myself, that part that laughs when the powerful parts are too zealous and instead, knows to walk away from pain and next time learns how to strengthen me to go past it. The wisest part knows how to fill my own cup and find the relationships that have an appropriate ebb and flo.

     And now, I love to find time each day to foster mindfulness. And via a mindfulness search, in
comes the Daily Planner. The planners come from Ponderlily.com. My hand comes to the paper, which fosters the hand/mind connection. It sets an intention, which is more like something lovely: a day off this week or what I will manifest. Then it can reference the Google Calendar because want to (weird!) and write down timed things. Then I write down what I need to get done. I make sure I add a cup of tea to the projects. And I sleep better.

     I tried one day without it. I wandered around aimlessly and tried to complete one task. I managed to cook some food. It almost didn't happen.

     I may not complete everything, but so far, I complete far more and it's easier to see what's left. It's a tactile, visual way of organizing my day.

     It's early afternoon in September. I hear the roar of the Mitsubishi as it enters the street. The smell of weed wafts through an open window. And my daily planner tells me that it's time to post my blog. 

Cheers!