The space between summer and fall is one of those renewal periods in my year. Spring is another one, of course, but Fall is special because, you guessed it -- there's no pollen! Everything is cooling off, but there's still warm days interspersed here and there in the South even up to Christmas, for heavens' sake. Then from Christmas to March we've got little sun siestas all along the way, mixed with the occasional ice and sleet storm. We might get snow one day and the whole place shuts down, even if it's just from the threat of it. I've been mulling priorities in my brain these last few days. We desperately need to clean out our barn, but Ken says that half of that mess belongs to our son who is still working on building their house. I don't believe him. That man is the most organized neatnick known to humanity, but he doesn't have the ability to throw anything away. His clothes are color-coded in the closet, shirts are spaced equidistant from each other, and all his belts and ties are perfectly stored in their racks. But he can't throw away a candy wrapper. Oh yes, he folds it neatly and lays it on the counter (perfectly parallel to the edge). Then I have to be the one to throw it away. When it comes time to clean up or organize his shop, I'm the unlucky one who gets the job. He can't bear to think of disposing of anything, so I have to make those decisions. I'm the mean mug who is filling up the junkyard, ya'll. Don't hate me. I'm the messy one and I've also got all my collections of paraphernalia cluttering up the house. But I love my junk. It's too pretty to throw away. You see the hypocrisy here? Stopping to prioritize our lives takes sincere intention and effort. You have to actually stop, turn off HGTV, make a plan, get off your duff. Read: quit watching other people live and get to it. Please remember that I am preaching to myself. If I write it down, maybe I'll do something about it. Ken hates my sticky notes, but I need them because if I don't put a reminder right in front of my face, I'll go chasing the next butterfly and forget all about it.
What do I love? What do you love? Put it on a sticky note. If you decide later that you don't love it, throw it away. Sort them in order of priority and then actually do something every day to make that thing show up in your life. We don't need 500 of these, not even 20. Stick to the top 5 or 10 if you can, then daily remind yourself to give them energy.
I was thinking this morning about paint. Paint is a lovely thing to me. I love the movement of it over a page or wall or piece of furniture. The way it changes the world is magic. It's not terribly expensive. When you add your effort to it, it becomes something new and different. It can be ugly, but I ain't having that. It smells wonderful, covers a multitude of sins and feels like the world just got a do-over. I get down, when I haven't had enough paint in my life. This is just a fact of my existence and I keep forgetting that. I should put a new sticky note on my desk: Paint Something Today. Heading out shortly to get paint samples...
We can live for years without doing the things we say we love or want to do. I had a friend who kept saying, for years, that they wanted to ride the whitewater down the Colorado River (that seems pretty much like hell to me -- think about it, cold, wet, all that jostling...). With the event never occurring, I recently asked my friend when they were going to do it. There was some pondering and then he said, "You know, truthfully, I really don't care about doing that." So I said, "Quit saying it then!" Time's a wastin' and if we're gonna do something, let's get to it. If not, let's make another plan, a realistic one. To quote an overused but wonderful phrase: Carpe diem!
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