Yesterday turned out to be an unexpected fun day of rest and relaxation for me.   At church Sunday at The New Way POD, my friend Jane Warner told me it was going to rain, so I decided to stay inside all day.  I woke up with an idea to cook a giant stew for a fave neighbor and pal who eats far too few home cooked meals.  Ok, so I was just really in a cooking mood and didn’t want to end up with a ton of food in the house, so he was my excuse to do it. That also freed me up to put meat and fat in the dish, so I made a savory beef stew.   I first coated chunks of stew meat with seasoned flour and browned in olive oil.  Then I sauteed a chopped onion with 3 chopped stalks of celery and 3 chopped carrots.  I ground up 1 tbsp each coriander seed, cumin seed and fennel seed with 3 bay leaves and added it to the vegetable saute with one stick of cinnamon to release the fragrant oils.   I threw in about 20 chopped holy basil leaves.  I love grinding spices and chopping vegetables and sauteing them all together.  That is so relaxing for me.  Cooking always brings me right into The Now.

I added some chicken broth and put the pot on a simmer for an hour.  Then I added another chopped carrot, 4 quartered red potatoes, 6 garlic cloves and maybe 2 cups of green beans and let it simmer another 45 minutes.  While it cooked, I went to the computer and worked on astrology charts.

Astrology is something I enjoy studying and don’t make enough time for.  I like studying the charts of friends  for deeper insight into their personalities.  I like studying the charts of clients and showing them how to strengthen areas of weakness and enhance skills and discover talents.  I find astrology is so good for that.  It shows me my path of least resistance to happiness and freedom.  Kind of like getting a haircut to follow the natural wave of your hair.  It makes it easier to get up and get on with your adventures.

When the stew was done, I packaged it up and delivered it and visited with my pal and his two cats for an hour.  His are indoor cats and they are very curious and active and playful.  That’s a real contrast from my aloof, sullen duo.  His are also very slim and sleek, another contrast.  And yet another contrast is his house was dust free, nary a cat hair or dust bunny to be seen!  This man is self employed at a demanding job and he has time to keep his home white glove immaculate?  WTF?

I can get so focused on work that I lose sight of my surroundings.  It’s Florida, so the windows have been open since October and the cats and I are constantly in and out of the house to the woods and yard and back in.  Dust can pile up pretty quickly.  Not until someone is coming over do I take notice and frantically begin to vacuum and clean.

Cleaning is also something that brings me into The Now.  Yard work does that for me also, as does sewing and yoga and even walking around the block.  My half of the block is wooded and the rest is houses side by side in our little quarter-acre lots.  I usually walk to the east first, to take the wooded way around and enjoy the crickets and birds and squirrels as long as I can.  Then I’m around the corner and my back neighbor’s house begins the row of houses side by side as I continue west.  I hear Lily barking as I pass her house and she’s the only dog I hear until I round the corner again on my block.  When I see the patch of pine and oak woods ahead of me, I am almost home.

I love living in this little patch of woods in this little neighborhood in this little town in this little state in this little country on this tiny, tiny planet.  I feel so connected to everything on it, as if the entire world is my neighborhood.  It’s so tiny and so huge at the same time.  Huge because it’s my world.  MY world.  I’m starring in MY world and I get to write the script.  That’s huge.

The more time I can make myself spend in The Now, the more I am aware of  just how much my being happy is related to me attracting the things I want to attract.  The more time I spend in the Now, the more I am aware how huge and important the small things around me really are.  How important the people are.  How important we are to each other.  That gives me a new perspective on national and world matters.  That allows me to see patterns in circumstances and events.  Seeing the patterns gives me insights that are valuable when making decisions considering consequences.  It also facilitates me being connected, tapped in, tuned in, turned on when I’m working with clients.

So when it comes right down to it, I didn’t have a vacation day yesterday at all.  That was a full working day.  If me being in The Now allows me to do my job better, then it’s in the job description to goof off as much as I can.  And know it or not, it’s in YOUR job description as well.  Try it.  You’ll like it.  You’ll have to excuse me now, I have work to do.