Well-Lived Day

It’s hot. Summer doesn’t begin for another two weeks, and it was 99 degrees in my car after work today. I have no A/C and there is little respite from the heat in my home. But I’ve had a couple cups of wine tonight, and I began to read an amazing novel in White Teeth by the unbelievably beautiful and talented Zadie Smith and I love it, and I worked out for the first time since last month, and I feel good and great and amazing.

I missed Missoula today. I wanted to go out for a brief moment today, to hang out with people I don’t know, to buy books I really want, to read in the park and work out with people in a hot and sweaty gym. I forgot what good fiction does to me. It excites me tremendously. I want to write and read and explore the depths of this craft I love so much.

I did something with my OmniFocus setup today, and I kind of like the end result. I created a few new contexts since my main list has moved from the Today one to the Next one I wrote about a few weeks ago. I hated seeing my long list of tasks broken up by a few contexts, so I thought I should break it up a bit more, just to make them a bit more specific and easier for me to see as I scroll through the list. I pulled out my trusty Field Notes notebook and started thinking through how I can break it down and I like the system I came up with. Organization is fun when I think it’ll benefit me in the long run, and I think today was one of those days.

I got rid of my routines. Habits and routines are essential but not when you’re forcing them more than allowing them to naturally fit into your life. I’ve been forcing them, and I’ve been dreading them, and I’ve been running away from them. They’re gone. I know what I need to do and when to do them. These are tasks and not appointments. I can do them whenever I want throughout the day, and that’s something that’s freeing. I do what I want to do when I want to do them, and I’m having a lot more fun doing it this way. I do have to be careful that I get complacent and not get anything done, so that’s something I’m being cautious about.

Life is so much more fun and tolerable when it’s simpler, when it’s not filled to the brim with tasks scheduled and thought about days, even weeks, beforehand, and when it’s simply lived the way it’s calling to be lived at that moment. That’s a lesson I learned the hard way, but I think (I hope) it sticks around for the long run. I don’t want to crash and burn because I was too hard or too easy on myself. I want to smile because I lived my days well, and I lived my day well today.