This has been the perfect season for my highly competitive inner slacker. I’ve put up my feet and sipped ice beverages with the best of them. “Mañana” has become my favorite word. All was good until I noticed that September is sneaking up behind me. And now Slacker Sue and Serious Susan have come to a face-off.
I sit right now in the mountains, savoring the summer air, listening to the nearby creek. I want to write about the stuff that folks from my home state Oregon are known for. Boring old Nature and mountains and beaches and stuff like that. The stuff of life.
That’s what I want to write about. And I will write that. But first I need to put aside all the roles and responsibilities and identities that keep demanding attention. This means forgetting for a while that I’m a (Fill in the Blank): ____ mother/coach/mentor/teacher/wife/daughter. A Self who has Big Responsibilities.
This requires some amnesia about all the ways I could definitely improve myself, forgetting for a few minutes the next goal on my Self-Improvement Agenda. I’ve had a serious addiction to Self-Improvement for almost forty years now, so this habit of self- improvement has a bit of a toehold.
I’m tired of it. And yet, as I sit under this sunny blueness of a ripe summer day, I do remember…for a time. And then I go back to all the clichés of that Stuff of Life. The whole miracle of it.
Okay, having written that, Slacker is back in full-on form. Extreme-Slacker. Pause.
The month of August is half over now. I have a choice: A: to experience as much pleasure as I can jam in. Or B: as much presence as I can remember to have. I choose A and B. The two seem to walk hand-in-hand.
That is the wish, my affirmation or intention or whatever you want to call it during this Ripest of Times.
Savor. Presence. And Pleasure. The marriage of the two.
