Here's how it works. You plan everything, carefully, but not down to the last detail. Things almost never work out the way we plan them. I have had to learn this the hard way, the long hard way. I have over the years become a lot better organized and I tend to try to get things done right away or as soon as possible. I have eliminated from my life most forms of procrastination though it still happens from time to time. I like to get things done and to do them well. I also have become inexhaustible in my painting and drawing as well as my writing. There is a very simple reason for being so recklessly prolific. I am not getting younger and I want to get everything done while I am still able. I could have another half century left. Or another year. Get busy.
Today, as usual, I have had to juggle professional and personal obligations. Not always easy but fortunately never impossible. I had three major headaches that I had to figure out: how to find time to buy enough food to make dinner tonight, how to find time to make dinner without knocking myself out too late in the evening, leaving enough time to get at least an hour in to work from home. Along with all this I still wanted to get in my minimum of five miles of walking today and still find time to work on my current drawing. All this I wanted to accomplish without compromising or cutting corners on my three professional obligations (two clients two hours each and a professional meeting (another two hours) later today.
I resolved that I would get just one thing accomplished: following my first professional appointment, which always ends early, I would attempt to buy groceries and bring them home before heading out again to see my next client.
I was up early enough to fit in a half an hour at home working on my computer for the art project I am preparing for one of my worksites (gleaning from Wikipedia biographical information about Vincent Van Gogh while deleting unnecessary or superfluous information. This has to be ready by mid-September and it is going to be one of six sessions. Each session I will be focussing on one of six colours with a presentation about a famous artist and paintings by the same and other artists who use said colour particularly well. As well as Van Gogh I will also be profiling Emily Carr, Claude Monet, Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Georgia O'Keeffe, And the Group of Seven. Wish me luck everybody. The good news is I get paid for all the research time.)
I walked a half mile to the Canada Line station on my way to meet my client. Later, from a different station, I walked with him another half mile to his destination. That's one mile walked. I walked back to the market, another half mile, where I bought all the left over produce I would be needing this evening. From the station in Yaletown I walked another half mile to my home. Two miles walked this morning, three to go. At home I spent an hour working on the art project, then I walked over the Granville Bridge to the home of my next client (one and three-quarter miles). My client made one of his b s excuses for not wanting to go out today so we had a cancellation. I walked back home, another mile and three-quarters, or altogether or three and a half miles, five and a half hours altogether. I had already walked more than my quota.
At home, while suffering through a nasty allergy attack (sneezing fits and drippy nose), I steamed a large pot full of broccoli in water and lemon juice as well as boiling whole wheat rotini pasta and six hard boiled eggs. I finished up an hour of work, drained the broccoli, pasta and eggs. Cooled everything and put it in the fridge, blew my nose and sneezed some more. A lot more. Altogether I had logged six and a half hours of paid employment and it was only two in the afternoon.
I took the bus within one and a half miles of the office which is in Marpole, quite far from where I live and walked a half mile to a favourite café of mine (Bean Around The World) It was inexplicably closed, a bit of a disappointment because the owner and I are on friendly terms and I haven't been able to get over there since sometime in May. So, I walked another mile to a different Bean Around The World Café, closer to the office, where I passed more than a half hour savouring an iced Americano while getting some work done on my current drawing.
Then I walked another mile to the office which added to the mile and a half I had walked already from bus stop to coffee shop number one, then to coffee shop number two means that I walked two and a half miles this afternoon, on top of five and a half this morning and midday or at around eight miles today. Not at all bad. The client we were going to meet with did not show up, which gave me time to chat and debrief with my supervisor, strategize with a co-worker and get caught up on my paperwork. Also another two hours pay, or eight and a half hours today in total. On the bus I was reading a book of Octavio Paz's writings, in Spanish, a renowned Mexican writer and philosopher and thinker as well as a Nobel laureate and I was in stitches laughing about his comparing the human face with the human posterior.
I am at home now. I had extra time to prepare dinner, relax and eat it and write yet another goddam post on this goddam blog of mine. Cheers!
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