do the next thing

January 29, 2016 - Daily Notes

Some days, everything happens all at once. 

You have a cold so you sleep in and when you wake up you remember that it is the last Friday in January and things are due. You owe emails, taxes, bills, reports, invoices and drafts. You have two afternoon appointments and a conference call on your calendar. You need coffee. You shower and stumble to Starbucks and they make you a venti when you ordered a tall but today that is a really good thing because:

Magic on the doorstep when you get back home...the FedEx man dropped a box of PROOFS from your printer...the proofs for Issue Two of Lucia are here and you were not expecting them until Monday. You squeal delight through your sore throat, nearly drop your cup and your umbrella, and rush to carry the box in from the rain. 

You consider for a moment not opening it until tomorrow. There is so much work to do today. You leave the box on the dining room table and head to your computer and the moment you sit down you know you cannot focus on anything else until this beauty is out of that box. So you go back to the dining room table that doubles as your layout desk and you rip open the package.

Stunned, you can barely breathe. The cover is more gorgeous than it looked on the computer screen. Everything is. Oh, my, god. You did this! It's here. You snap a photo in your excitement, dash to the computer to write a quick note on the blog to share the excitement with Lucia's growing family.

Your to-do list is still there, though. It is still long and everything is urgent. You remember what Pema Chodron says to do when you feel overwhelmed. She says to take a deep breath, feel your heart, and move into the next moment with an open mind. Then, simply do the next thing. Do it with your entire heart, give it all of your attention. When it is done, do the next thing. 

You smile. You did this. WE did this. 

xo,
laura