Time Well Kept

Please click the photo above to play the daily videoAnother hazy start, though I’ve given up reporting on it as news. The haze is simply furniture now, like the wardrobe you keep meaning to replace. The morning itself, though, was smooth again. Two in a row. I’m treating it with the cautious respect one gives a cat that has suddenly decided to sit on your lap. Don’t move. Don’t make a fuss. Let it happen.

First order of business was setting up the new timer at the clinic. I’ll admit I expected the novelty to wear off by mid-morning, the way most clever gadgets end up as expensive paperweights by the end of the week. It didn’t. Something about seeing the minutes physically run down sharpened things. Less drifting, fewer half-finished thoughts, no reaching for the phone to check something that didn’t need checking. I’m slightly annoyed it works this well, because it means the problem was never a lack of time. It was me. A small box has politely pointed this out, and I’ve chosen to take it on the chin.

The morning clinic was busy, properly busy, the sort where you only notice your coffee has gone cold when you reach for it and it tastes of regret. But it moved. Focus does that. A full morning feels very different when you’re in it rather than being dragged along behind it.

Lunch was at Upstairs Cafe, which I’d earned, or at least I told myself so. The pasta was good. Not life-changing, not something I’ll describe to strangers, just honestly good, which I think is underrated. We’ve become a little obsessed with food that has to be extraordinary, plated like modern art and photographed before it’s tasted. I’d take a well-made bowl of pasta, eaten while it’s still hot, over a deconstructed anything. There’s dignity in a dish that simply does its job.

The afternoon slipped by quietly, and the evening followed suit. A quiet night is a fine thing after a day that asked a lot. No plans, no particular agenda, just the low hum of the house and the faint suspicion I should be doing something more productive.

Which, naturally, I then did. Lectures to sort. There’s always a lecture somewhere on the horizon, waiting like a dentist’s appointment you booked months ago in a fit of optimism. I opened the slides with the usual mixture of good intentions and mild dread. I’m one of those people who believes I work best under pressure, while knowing perfectly well that’s a story procrastinators tell themselves. So I got a head start. Not finished, not even close, but begun, which is half the battle and considerably less than half the work.

It occurs to me the timer might help here too. I may need to buy a third.

Perhaps not. Two timers is a system. Three is a personality.