I sleep in stages. I’ll go months with erratic sleep and then spend many hours a day for weeks sleeping at odd hours, catching up on my REM. It’s heaven when that happens, but it plays havoc with my social life. My personal life revolves around my sleep/work schedule. Sleep comes first, since when it comes, I surrender to it. Work comes second and I do more work than any two people I know. I have many irons in the fire, and each is maintained by a little attention on a regular basis. My work is not hard, it just requires sustained focus while in the right state of consciousness. Getting in the right state of mind is like foreplay. It begins waaaaay in advance. To entrain myself into that state of consciousness, there are several things I do.
(1) At end of each work day, I make a To Do List for the next day. On the left, I write everything I have to do that day. On the right, I list everything else I have to do. (2) Before I go to bed, I read over the things I have to do the next day. I spend a few moments seeing myself breeze through getting it done. (3) When I wake up, I bring to mind the day’s tasks and again run it through my head for a few minutes. By doing these three things, I am not only psyching myself up for the work, I’m pre-paving a fast and easy job.
They delivered the July Horizons Magazine last week and all week I’ve been pre-paving driving to deliver Cassadaga and Melbourne. I thought I’d do it Friday and take today off. I awoke early this morning and decided to drive to the beach with my yoga mat and a big cup of hot chai with soy milk. At 6:41am I reached U.S. 1 and the Indian River just as the sunrise was peeking through the clouds. I pulled over to take the above photo and a few other drivers had the same idea.
I continued driving toward the ocean and decided to deliver magazines on the way as I passed the stores, even though it was 7:00am and no one was open. There were very few people on the beach at that hour and I had my entire area to myself. I drank my chai and listened to the surf, then got psyched up to drive to Cassadaga — right now! I made the trip alone for the first time in a year and had fun listening to the radio too loud, and seat dancing to favorite songs.
On the way back, I kept the radio off so I could prepave the tasks I’d do as soon as I got back to the office. I had a couple of calls to make and bills to pay, but they went quickly since I was still in work mode. Keeping myself in work mode is half of my job. Cheerleading myself on to getting my jobs done and my goals accomplished is half the job.
I napped from 2-4:30pm and woke up wondering if I had time to drive to the credit union and deposit a check. I looked online for their hours and discovered Space Coast Credit Union has a branch a mile away from me at Bayside! I jumped in the car and drove over, and opened a free checking account while I was there. I’d already given it thought earlier this week.
When I had my house built, it was in the boonies. The Malabar Road exit off 1-95 was just another two lane road. Since then, Malabar Road has become an eight lane highway with every franchise grocery and big box store, fast food restaurant, banks, post office, and now Eastern Florida State College. It feels like they built it all around me, and just for me. I like to stick close to home because I enjoy my time here. Now within walking distance are my groceries, my gas stations, post office, salt, water, restaurants, home improvement stores, banks, even the vet. All I had to do was daydream about how I’d like to have all those amenities yet still live in my little cottage in the woods. What I attracted by the power of my thoughts was them building an entire business community around me. I couldn’t have planned it better myself.
Just three miles is my rental home and pool, so each early evening we’ve been enjoying the pool, which yesterday was 84 degrees. Nothing like floating on a noodle at sunset to end the day. I live in Paradise. And by the power of my continued focused attention, may it ever be so.