From one extreme…

Ok, so it’s not like this has been a bad day. It’s the most shockingly beautiful late-summers day here. The sky is cobalt blue, the still sea is azure striped with turquoise. The seagulls are flying low on the still air, surfing the currents right at my window-height. I have been running so fast for so long, I hardly remember how to slow down, breathe, and be.

So this morning was my chance to check it out. My two close collaborators from these last two days are nowhere to be found: Carolyn is gone now, on a plane back to the US after a blissful time working and playing together; Keith is off to Europe so that he can run the board of his international NGO for a couple of weeks. The kids are off at school. I sat down, ignoring the to-do list which had important but not urgent things on it, and just worked on my book. MY book, the one I’ve been working on for years (seriously, years) about the connection between adult developmental ideas and organizational development and leadership development practices. This was heaven, bliss, brilliance. This was everything I wanted, a quiet house, a blue sky, an empty day, a laptop in the sunshine.

And that was fantastic for the first little while. And then I remembered that really what I needed before writing was coffee. So I made that. THEN I could write some. Ok, but then I was getting the nibbles, so I ate a peach (which always always makes me think of ts eliot—anyone else like that?). THEN I could write some again. But oh how sleepy I was getting. And there were emails to write. Perhaps tea and a little break to do emails. And then, er, lunch. And dessert of lunch. And after-dessert tea.

I did write, really. I wrote well, and finished off the section of this chapter I’ve been stuck on for months. Does writing always make me so restless, though? Or is it the empty house and the friends on airplanes jetting across the world? Or the constant thrumming of the hammer on my new deck?

Finally time to pick up the kids. Now I’d have someone to be with, someone who loved me. I’d put aside my work and play with them this afternoon. Naomi wanted to do a baking project—as she often has for the past nine years, ever since she could say “baking project” when she was two. But now she likes to do them ALONE, thank you very much. Aidan wanted to build a toy for the pet rats he is sure I’ll give in and say yes to. No one wanted to swim with me! Or play with me! Or do anything else that would prevent my working!

And so now I’m alone in this lovely house by the sea. Aidan has gone to cricket. Naomi is off practicing netball at school. Rob is riding his bike north of here, and Michael is riding the train south. Tomorrow will be a bustling day of airplanes and meetings and (at long long last) a hair cut. Perhaps the one extreme of people everywhere and always something I had to be doing is not well-followed by people all somewhere else and nothing I have to be doing. Perhaps gradual would be slightly better than one extreme to the next. (But please, no one remind me of this feeling when I hit the next wall of work two weeks from now. I can’t stand to shatter the mirage that I do stillness well.)

ps the pictures here are for Carolyn--ordinary visions of life here in paradise.