Clearing a path

Maybe it’s the deepening of fall, with it’s darker days and mood changes, but I’m feeling the pull to write again. To just write, not with some bigger purpose outside of self-expression. There isn’t a burning topic on my mind that I want to flesh out. It’s an urge, a persistant impulse. A way to step back from my day-to-day and reflect upon it from a short distance.

Daily tasks include time contstraints. The things are located in time, and there are time periods when it’s better to do a certain thing, like stain and seal the new backyard fence and repair and replace the gutters with the holes in the effacement before winter arrives. Nothing disasterous would happen immediately if these repairs weren’t addressed this season, but they would carry over into the spring, and pile up while other, fresh spring tasks will pop up with their own temporal requirements.

I have several email to send, I think about eight, to let clients know about my price changes. I could do that now, on Saturday, or let it sit for the work week, but my schedule is busy and the week is short with Thanksgiving, so I’m not sure when I would get to it. And then, if not that week, we’re into December, and it’s only a month of notice, which is sufficient, but only just, as I like to have a bit of time to spare when possible.

I’ve signed up for a new Jonny Decimal course. I love his work, and am excited to incorporate his tools and mentality, to look more deeply into my workflow, again, because it’s a process that is endlessly fascinating. What I’m currently doing works pretty well, but there are ways in which I feel undo rush and pressure of fear, of believing that I need to attend to tasks right away as soon as they pop up. That produces very good results, but it also short-circuits longer-range project potential, as I rarely have an open space to think into and allow myself the time to contemplate and for new concepts and urges (desires) to emerge naturally. Instead I fill in the gap with little catch-up obligations, like the emails. It isn’t a bad thing necessarily, and I’m wary of drawing a line of good vs bad approaches, but I am suspicious that I may be giving away more time and energy out of some fabricated sense of urgency.

It isn’t hard to write. There are other things to write: emails, as I have already mentioned, and rewrite my bio. And maybe that’s it. I want to repair my website yet again, but that is starting to feel like a terrible time suck and another chore that may not have a point.

When I shift my perspective to loosen up and create more space, the house whooshes in with all of it’s unresolved projects. And don’t get me wrong, I’ve done good work in tending it, following up on all sorts of things that needed attention. There are still odds and ends, and I’d like to compile all those into a list and then start chipping away at it, asking myself what’s getting in the way and what small step to take next. Clearing a path.

Ultimately, after this reflection, I went ahead and wrote the 7 or 8 emails to clients. It was a chore, a bit repetitive, and I’m sure some of the tension is because it relates to money, informing clients about a fee increase, though it’s only $5. But I do feel a bit better, like I just cleaned up after myself. I like setting myself up well going forward.

Now, I’ll try having AI clean up my website again, and buy the software that Jonny recommends, because I freaking love that guy and what he’s doing. Then maybe I’ll download a copy of my bio to at least start poking at it, if that seems like something worthwhile, which is does, at the very least as a model for the other therapists at the practice, just like my way of stepping into the fee increase, or Natalie’s 529 or the donor advised fund, or a budget, or any of the many little and not-so-little things that are worth tending to.