what are you going to do today?

He asked me this while we were laying in bed enjoying the silver silence this morning.  Of course I have a list of things to be done in my head, I usually do.  And if for some reason I don't, the first thing on the list is to make one. This isn't novel, I'm sure someone out there is nodding their head agreeing with me.  Not to be mistaken for creating lists just to appear or make myself busy, or having lists longer than I can accomplish just to overwhelm myself.  I just like a good running log of things to organize.  You too?

Today though, for some reason I didn't want to own up to any of the things not included, but most definitely, on my list.  If I actually wrote them down list form it somehow would seem less purposeful somehow.  

Here's the thing.  I've been thinking a lot about how I would spend my free time here on our grand East Coast adventure.  I want to make it meaningful.  And I don't think it can be done with too much structure.  I want to create, write, breathe, work hard, relax, and most of all be free of old ways of thinking.  Crack open a new chapter and write something meaningful on the pages of what I'm sure we'll recall fondly as 'the summer we spent in DC interning'.  And while that phrase will bring with it all the things we saw and did, I also want it to recall a time when I dug deep and discovered more within, even as we discover the gems in our charming neighborhood and beyond.

With plenty of free time on my hands after my cushy part time intern hours, I'm determined to do more thinking and less listing of things to accomplish.  Lucky for me I'm married to a thinker, I'll use him as my guide if I get lost in this quest.  He can be so still.  I'm envious of this talent of his.  I've been proud of my multi-tasking self and the ability to get a lot done until recently when I've started to ask myself some questions expecting different answers.  What am I accomplishing?  Is it all that important, or am I doing it simply because that's how I've done it in the past? Always in search of feeling new things, I don't ever want to be bored within myself and I feel like it'll be an adventure to try to slow it all down and just be.

I've been reading about solitude, and concentration, and being a leader.  And thinking.  How to think better and be less fragmented.  And about courage of the moral variety, not the physical type, which you have to have to bike around here by the way.  Somehow it all feels very connected and I'm getting that sense of being in the middle of a thought that will take some time to form.  

One of those things off the list, so to speak, is to fine tune my ability to close my ears to the constant swirl of conventional wisdom and other people's opinions and focus on filtering through what's mine and what my mockingbird tendencies migrate toward repeating to me as my own thoughts like I came up with them all on my own.

So what am I going to do today?  Aside from the real things on the list that certainly won't get in the way of one of our limited weekend adventures, I'm also going to concentrate on being alone with my thoughts.  Getting past the first one that is most certainly someone else's idea that has been filed away as a good idea and hopefully stumble on something original and worth the effort it will take to cultivate it into something more than an idea.  Then I want to look at it again.  Think it over, figure it out from a new angle, and outlast the desire to call it good enough when my constrained multi-tasking mind wearies and wants to move on.  I want to gather myself into a certain point and do something real with my day.

What are you going to do today?