Earlier today, I saw my writer hero Liz Gilbert, via Rob Bell, post something to Facebook about not giving up the great for the good. Meaning: every day we have to do good things--pay our bills, grocery shop, menu plan, do our laundry, return emails, figure out something to do at 9 AM with a bunch of squirrely kids on Monday, obsessively check Twitter to see if anyone new has followed me and figure out if I need to follow them back, get on Pinterest and pin all the wine things. (Those are my good things.)
But there are also GREAT things you could be doing with your time. The good things are good; they're important. They keep us sane and together and out of foreclosure. But the GREAT things are what feed your soul, and only you know what your Great Things are. These are the things that make you sing, that make you wake up and go: Hurrah! I get to do (insert your Great Thing here) today!!!" These are the things that make Life rock.
Here are Great Things I did today:
*Slept in late, snuggled up with my sweet girl.
*Had time to enjoy my first cup of coffee, at my breakfast table while watching squirrels run around my backyard (in the summer, I sit on the back porch and do this).
*Hung out with Miss M (today we drew and colored and grocery shopped, and I took pictures of the naked Barbie she added to her Nativity...I'm certain Jesus would approve, but maybe not his mom)
*I cooked my first risotto (it was too glumpy, but tasted fine...I am not a talented cook, and I lack a tremendous amount of patience so often my creations are barely edible. But I find the act itself to be therapeutic and so I'm sorry if you end up with Salmonella; at least I feel so much better.)
*Had three glasses of cheap Riesling, and didn't even care.
*Found some new jazz music--Kelly Clarkson sings jazz! Who knew?! (Not me--obviously, I don't pay attention to music enough.)
*I wrote. Any day I can find time to write is a day worth living, if you ask me. I didn't work on any stories today, but I am writing this. And I feel so much better now.
*I read something really good. (It was an article shared by my favorite actor (hello and thank you, Jason Isaacs!) on Twitter, and was written by my (new) favorite filmmaker Saar Klein. I love it when I find really lovely gems like THIS, written by someone who is obviously really lovely himself. And funny. And thoughtful. With good advice you can apply to pretty much any profession--be courageous enough to let go of some of your control and see what magic happens to the work. I can think of a few past bosses I wish had that wisdom.)
So that's it for me. That's all I got for this weekend--I have five days to make it through til Winter Break starts, For the next five days, I'll be doing this:
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| In the South, we also use the phrase: Herding cats. Same thing except wiggly. |
I say herding cats all the time. Except this year for the first time in 12 or 13 years, I don't have my own classroom. I'm a consulting teacher and take little cute ones out of their classrooms for intervention. Which means I get to do fun things like sit for hours and write reports (ok, sometimes not fun) and when I want? I can just get up and go use the bathroom, which is just so novel to me! I'm a teacher and I can go to the bathroom whenever I want. Crazy talk. Anyway - I sorta miss herding cats.
ReplyDeleteI don't do Twitter and am obviously missing all sorts of stuff, but I love Rob Bell (he has his own tv show now) and am going to go click your link and read since we seem to be on the same wavelength about so many things and I'm sitting here with my coffee reading the internet.... xoxox Erin
Those are the best sorts of teaching jobs, aren't they? Where you get to focus on just one kid or a true small group (3-6 kids) and really go to town. Bathroom breaks whenever are nice, too. If only policy makers understood this like they understand reports.
ReplyDeleteRob Bell is one of my favorite human beings. He's smart, and I like smart people. I didn't know he has his own tv show! I will have to look this up so I can be obsessed with that, too. :-)