Children, Pets & Vinyl

Currently listening to: "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" on Crosby, Stills & Nash - on 1969 vinyl!
Playing on a portable self contained record player!

If you have kids or pets I'm sure you've noticed how they become ice breakers for small talk with strangers.

Guess what. Vinly does the same thing.

I had a fun little conversation with the clerk at the 2nd hand store where I got this LP and a stack of other cool finds (for 80 cents each). A stranger walking along in front of Target saw me coming out with the old style recored player, grinned and said, "That's fun."

She's right of course.

My List is Too Long Again

Why am I so often filled with discontent
over a to do list I can never satisfy?
No matter what I do,
There is always more.

My list is too long.

But my list is filled with good and important things.

Life is filled to overflowing with good things. (God said, "It is good.")

Which things is one person, with one lifetime,
60 minutes per hour, 24 hours per day, 365 days per year
to choose?
How is one to let go of the rest
during 60 minutes, 24 hours, 365 days, or a lifetime?

I'm not looking for another scheme for organizing and prioritizing,
unless it's one that brings spiritual transformation:
clarity about the most important things for me,
patient discipline in engaging them,
and the ability to let the other good things go.

I really am only one human...60 minutes per hour, 24 hours, 365 days, how many years?
I really can only do so much.
What shall it be?
What shall it be now?

Carry Nothing

Of course the post below begs the questions:

• what are the basics?
• why carry anything else?

How little could I reasonably carry?

Could I carry nothing?

What were the disiples to carry or not in the story when Jesus sent them out?

Carry One Thing

I was out today planning to come home again before work.
Could I go right to work without going home if I needed or wanted to?
Oh no, I'd have to get my stuff.

What stuff??
All I need to do my job is myself. All other supplies are at my workplace.

The bag of stuff I always carry around because I might find a chance to get around to doing what I'm going to do with that stuff....

I never do of course.

New approach:

Other than the basics (wallet, comb, phone, etc.) and things I know I'll use (my lunch for work, letters I'll mail on my way there...)

I may only carry one thing. ONE. Carry ONE thing only.

Be free.

3 Easy Steps

3 Easy Steps to a more managable to do list.

1. Put today's date at the top of the paper
2. Write your to do list.
3. Add the words "The week of" in front the date.

In effect that's what I did today. I was quite prolific in writing my to do list. No writer's block there! If I can get it all done in a week I'll be happy. Maybe I should make that a month.

Keys

I reached in my pocket and pulled out a set of keys that aren't mine!

I'm sure someone is missing them. They've probably gone to a lot of trouble over their absence. There's a car key, the car's electronic lock/unlock thing, probably a house key, a few others that could belong to this or that.....you know, more or less the normal set of keys to our lives we all carry.

Whose keys am I carrying? How did I get them!?

They look enough like mine that I suppose I absent mindedly picked them up from somewhere they were laying, unconsciously assuming I was picking up my own keys. (Yes, I do have my own keys too.)

Where would have they been laying? Did I find someone's already lost keys? Or did the keys become lost when I picked them up?

I contacted people at the last few places I'd been. So far no one seems to be looking for the keys. Actually I think I may have even pulled them out of the basket we keep keys and miscellaneous stuff in at our house. Just pulled them out without looking at their detail and stuffed them in my pocket like I often do with my own keys.

How long have I had them? Could it even be that my husband picked them up somewhere? (Doesn't seem like something he would do.) Is there any other explanation for how they might have gotten into our house?

This is very strange. And I feel bad. But I don't know how to get these keys back to whoever they belong to.

It reminds me of stories I've heard about people who walk away from an event (or a bar) with someone else's coat. Same style, color and brand as their own....but not the same things in the pockets!....Yes, it was MY coat the keys were in....

Are you missing keys!?

Follow Through

I'm cleaning up my e-mail in box.

Clear evidence of my lack of follow through. Lots of old stuff in there.

What's this about?

• False ideas that I'll get around to reading something later.
• False ideas that I'll need to refer to something later.
• Short sightedness
• Putting off for a supposed better time what I should just deal with now
• Lack of organization for things that I really do want to follow up on
• Living for the ideal rather than living fully in the real

If I could clear up these issues, you don't know how much difference this would make in not just my e-mail in-box, but my life!

So, here's to continued progress...