It’s Wednesday in a week of vacation. A whole week off! Yeahoooooo!!!!! For once I decided not to go anywhere. Despite invitations and prodding I held firm and made up my mind that I was going to clean out the basement and lose twenty pounds. Both of these tasks are pretty formidable. I had a number of well meaning friends tell me that neither was possible and knowing me they did not feel I would accomplish either one. OK, that’s fair. I haven’t been a go-getter in recent years. There are a lot of projects sitting on the back burner to the point that if life were a stove, the whole damn thing would be unusable for lack of space. So I have come to a junction. I have to finish a bunch of things. I have to set some goals and then step by step get things done. This is something that I am good at doing. That is the story of my life. And often I have multiple things going on so that progress looks slow but all of a sudden two or three big things get accomplished after plodding along. It is sort of the story of my life.
I remember when I was preparing for my comprehensive exams in Santiago de la Compostela in 2000 when I read a quote, which I have come to love, off of a motivational tear off daily calendar. It said: “When the time to perform has arrived, the time to prepare is over.” At that time I was worrying about taking the exams and hoping that I could get the MA degree. I only had a year or two before my certificate would expire and without that degree I could not renew my teaching license. The reading list was enormous and there was so much to review and study if I was going to pass those exams spread out over three days. Everyone was intimidated so it wasn't just my personal angst. Well, I did it. I passed the exams, my paper was accepted after I made the final corrections, and I did it. I am now 9 years further down the road of life and I still have some “I did it.” left in me. So I am taking advantage of the February and the April vacation and I am going to achieve some of the goals and clear out some of the uncompleted works in progress. That is why I am going to finish this and then get up and get going and walk three miles. Losing weight is on that stove and that is one item on the back burner that I want moved down to front and center. I don't know how many of the projects I will get done this week. But I do know one thing. I am having a great time working on things and seeing the progress. I am sleeping more and the sleep is deep and recuperative. I am laughing more and listening to music and the things I am doing are fun because I want to do them and I want to see them finished. I can see progress but I am not working all the time on them. I am taking time to do a lot of things. In the end, I think that is the best kind of vacation there is. Sorry Disneyland.
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