Having an accomplishful day has always been important in my birth family. Now that I am "retired" from teaching, I have many days when I don't feel particularly "accomplishful," and on those days, I feel vaguely ill at ease. Lately, I've been trying to figure out what it is that makes me feel like I have made good use of my time and what it is that makes me feel like I've done absolutely nothing of consequence all day.
Take today, for example. Today, I think I accomplished quite a lot. The day got off to a rocky start when I decided to look at my calendar at 8:30, still in my pajamas, to discover that I had a dentist appointment at 9:00 in nearby Dover.......well, that caused me to take the shortest shower I think I've ever taken, and exceed the speed limit in a way that I haven't been doing lately in my miserly attempt to save gas. After such a come-from-behind start to the day, I proceeded to get the car washed, it having been the target of low-flying birds overnight, and then came home and balanced my bank statement the first time I tried.
I tossed in laundry, and hung it out to dry, in spite of the fact that skies were cloudy and i thought it might rain. While I was outside, I emptied out last year's pots of chrysanthemums and made 3 neat stacks of empty pots under the screen porch, dumped a trashcan full of leaves I had raked a few days ago and rearranged wheelbarrows and garden carts so that I could wheel the lawnmower out and plug in the battery so that I can use the key starter. Before I had lunch, I did 45 minutes or so of raking and cutting back bushes along the back side of the stream that flows through the yard.
When I went inside for lunch, I already felt accomplishful. I read two essays while I ate lunch, then retired to the computer where I sent out multiple emails to try to recruit more people for my summer institute. When I tired of doing that, I worked on a spreadsheet of names and addresses of people who have come to our events this year. At close to 4 o'clock, I remembered to call mly mother, and then I headed back outside to reward myself with some more raking and clean-up of the back lawn. I cultivated between the rows of vegetables coming up in one raised bed and continued my raking of endless willow branches until after 5. I resisted the desire to try to start the lawnmower and do some mowing, knowing that the battery is supposed to charge for 24 hours.
So.....here I sit, feeling good about my day, and watching Dancing With the Stars, and I feel very accomplishful. Since I have to deal with this darn Puritan/Calvinist work ethic, I think I should reflect on what it is that makes today accomplishful. I realize that devoting a chunk of time to something seems to be important. Some days I try to do too many different things. Today I really focused on lawn work, because I thought it was going to rain, and once the back gets soggy, it will be days before I can walk back there. So.....not only did I spend a lot of time out there, the type of work left visible results, and that seems to be important to me as well. I attribute my desire to actually be able to see results to the 33 years of teaching and having mostly intangible results. The work I did on the project was good today as well, but emails are very intangible. I did what I did to reduce the amount of time I will lie awake thinking about what else i can do to try to beat people out of the bushes. Only one person actually answered an email today, but I think I'm closing in on doing all that I can, and then it's out of my hands.
At some point, maybe I'll be able to just do anything with my day and not obsess about needing to accomplish anything. For now, that seems to be a ways away. It's about a lifetime of "doing" and only a short exposure to just "being."
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