I just bumped into a wonderful local friend of the coffee shop. The words ‘dear old friend’ are on the tip of my tongue, but sound trite. Avoid trite, I always say to myself and others, avoid trite.
Lindsay and I are 6.30am friends of Peet’s on Chestnut Street, and the last time we bumped into each other was in my very first week of ‘Project Blank Canvas‘.
I described the grand arc of these last 117 days: trips (Oaxaca, Colorado) and learning (freediving, AI, nutrition) that have been on a list for too long; a lot of visitors to San Francisco, and relaxed time with old friends (including phone calls half-filling many days); domestic spring cleaning (the giant book purge, and fun experience of having a brilliant Pakistani VA inventory these for the sales or donation process), the observation of different energy that emerges from entrepreneur friends and employee friends, and the emergence of a first idea that is sticking curiously through my ideas merry-go-round.
‘Behind schedule’, I joked with Lindsay…
It’s likely a law of nature that when you always feel too busy, you always feel too slow. And both are illusions cooked up in our head.
And that has been part of the point of Project Blank Canvas. Just stopping and stepping back from the professional merry-go-round to create all kinds of time – and to remove the main excuse for not getting round to a whole list of ideas. And, to see what happens…
Behind schedule.
There’s time to catch up, there’s always time. And that is the wonderful gift in life.
On another note, I had two delicious surprises this week, stumbling on forgotten items whose discovery gives that feeling of finding a $20 bill in the side of the sofa. And, with a plugged left ear right now from an ear infection, it’s great to be reminded how our state of mind can be turned upside down in an instant with a surprise, evocative, unfortunate or financial even.
The evocative surprise that came to me was finding a draft of an essay written during the early pandemic, The Question On A Mat In A Pandemic, and so posting this up onto my website.
And the other delicious – financial – surprise was a more practical blessing for Project Blank Canvas: in preparing for my final tax return review, I stumbled on a forgotten-about bank account (!) (due to a bank takeover), that I had not factored into my budgeting of time-off…
Life is so rich…
