One new thing I am doing is working to make good choices in moments. It means being present, and it means not procrastinating. It means weighing priorities and debating lasting pleasure and the value of having a thing done rather than undone. I know I often misgauge a task, especially in my teaching work. I think it will take two hours and it ends up taking five or even seven. But there are times, too, when I think things will take much longer than they really will. I think I am too busy, think I can't possibly stop to take the time to put my neatly folded clothes away after my trip to the laundromat, so they sit on the table in my studio in their pretty woven baskets, and I root around in them whenever I need clean clothes. I don't stop to create a new avatar for my online teaching because as much as I would like to, as much as I would enjoy it, I think other things take priority.
What I am learning is to sometimes stop to do the little thing I have been putting off or not indulging in, to take the little bit of time to cross something off my list or to enjoy the pleasure it brings even in the midst of all my more pressing tasks. Today I acted on a task that combined both the thing needing doing and the thing to be relished. I've had a half gallon plastic pot of snapdragons sitting on my patio, and a packet of catnip seeds lying on the table there, both waiting to be planted for more than a week now. Today I took a handful of unplanned minutes and planted the deep magenta flowers, spread the tiny black seeds and covered them with fresh dirt. I watered them both with my old metal watering can, the sun vanishing behind the mountain, the air cool against my arms. I have plenty of work still awaiting me this evening, but those stolen moments won't change that. Or maybe they will. Maybe I'll feel a gladness when I'm grading assignments tonight, knowing while I type on my laptop the snapdragons sink their roots into the wet earth, and the sleeping catnip seeds dream of sprouting new fragrant green life.
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