It hit me this morning as I was washing the breakfast dishes: I wasn't thinking about washing the dishes.  I was just washing the dishes.  My hands knew what to do.  Hot water, a bit of soap, the bottle brush and dishcloth.  It all just seemed to happen without my having to do a thing.  Yes, I had to decide to actually wash the dishes.  I could have left them in the sink, stacked up.  I might have filled the sink with water to let them soak until I felt like washing them, but I made the decision to just go ahead and wash the dang dishes.

I don't remember learning how to wash the dishes.  I do remember times when I was washing the dishes as a kid I would hear my grandmother from the other room shouting, "That water isn't hot enough!"  or "You need to scrub harder or that dried egg will not come off!"  I still hear her voice every morning in spite of the fact I have heard that piping hot, hand scalding water is not necessary if you are using anti-bacterial dishsoap with maybe a bit of bleach.  Dove is my go-to choice.  (Dove is the choice of marine biologists to cleanse the feathers of birds who have been exposed to tar and oil during an off-shore oil spill. More info.)

So I guess washing dishes became automatic.  I did it without having to think.  I likened it to when I learned to type in high school.  Anyone in the AP classes needed to learn to type because there would be hundreds of papers in their future.  Typing was mandatory.  Now of course keyboarding is prerequisite to survival.  Hunt and peck doesn't work.  Anyone with a laptop, computer, even a cell phone, needs to learn the QWERTY system.  What's remarkable is that repetition and practice, your fingers seem to learn where the letters are to commit your thoughts and messages to paper.  And I learned this in spite of my own resistance to actually learning.  

This is how I learn:  I get out of my way and just do it.  Seems to be a recurring theme these days.  They say to establish a new way to do something or create a new habit it takes repeating it for seven or twenty-one days.  Then it becomes second nature.  And there's the key that starts the train in the brain to learning: practice, repetition, rote.  I practiced my alphabet, my multiplication tables, riding a bike and saying my prayers.  To this date, I can just default to my implicit muscle memory.. What a deal!  The brain train is leaving the station.  All aboard!

  Don't you just love a letter or memo that begins, "To Whom It May Concern"?  Well, this isn't one of those.  It just that I was reflecting on an incident recently where I got into the wrong lane on the freeway which ended up making it very difficult to make the exit I needed to make.  "Note to self," I said to my passenger, "Don't take the carpool lane on the 60 coming east where the 215 and 60 meet if you want to get off at the Watkins/Central exit."  And that's what prompted this.  I am always making notes to myself to do something differently, remember this or that, or get dog food at the grocery store.  Note to self: write these things down!

So in that vein, and because you might be a "whomever this might concern",  I am making just such a note.  The note I am making here is that whenever I am dragging my feet about doing something, I need to just push forward and do it.   Like writing this blog.  It is so easy to listen to that annoying inner voice that tells me so very often that I just don't feel like it.  That is so bogus.  It is procrastination in disguise.  It is fear of commitment.  It is all those things that keep you from doing the things that you know if you do them you will feel so good afterwards and be glad you did them.  As the Nike slogan goes, "Just Do It!"    The Just Do It Story here.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to put up some of my photographs for a church exhibit and auction.  I dragged my feet and let it go and put it off.  Finally I just did it.  It felt so good.  And they were well received and three of the four were bought at the auction...not only raising money for the church, but raising my own self esteem and confidence.  So much so, I submitted another image for the upcoming member show at the Riverside Community Arts Association gallery.  It felt so good!  I was on a roll!  I even picked up a writing project and submitted a piece to the
Inlandia Institute Writers' Workshop I attend!   

So note to self (and whomever it may concern), the time is now.  Just do it.  

End of sermon.  Amen.
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Rushing about this morning, quick coffee with hastily prepared eggs and a bit of sausage, I got ready for another day and of busy busy what-not and to-do's.  Walked the dogs, took out the trash and threw whites in the washer with a healthy dose of Oxi-clean.  Suddenly found I was ready early for an early run to Orange County, so said to myself, "Self, you have time for a second cup of coffee!"  "Oh, no," I answered myself, "Too much trouble!  By the time its done, it'll be time to go!"  "No, it won't do it!"

I have been making coffee in a second-hand percolater that I picked up at an estate sale.  Made the best coffee I thought until for some reason I forgot to put water in it one morning and it began to burn.  I thought I caught it in time, but alas, it seems to have had a stroke and forgotten how to shut itself off when the cycle is done.  I am pretty sure it cannot be repaired.  Oh, well.  Back to the french press I thought hadn't been making good coffee.  Well, perhaps it was the human making it.  I tried it again yesterday and again today and wonders of wonders, it makes just fine coffee!

Anyway, I decided to make a second little brew.  (It is a small press, big enough to make one mug of coffee.  A cup seems not enough these days and who drinks coffee from cups these days anyway?)  So it is brewing right now as I write.  And there is time enough to drink it...leisurely...before I take off to get gas and hit the road.  

And taking the time to have that second cup (mug) feels so deliciously decadent, I am savoring every sip.  Maybe coffee isn't your thing.  That's fine.  But I am sure there is something that you can treat yourself to, take the time to fix or buy ready-made, and enjoy.  The point is to take time for it and indulge.  It is making my day.  Probably would yours, too.

This evening as I was leaving one of my writing workshops I found myself feeling a bit disconnected.  Everyone dispersed and and went their separate ways.  Feeling adrift, It was as if I wasn't quite plugged in right then.  

During the workshop I felt like I was connected to the other participants, but then someone would make an observation or comment actually repeating something I had already said as if I had never said it.  That I attributed to the layout of the room, my soft voice and  the probability the person who made the repeated remark having not heard me.  That happens.  It's time like that that make one stop and go "huh?"

Maybe it is because I have come to enjoy my alone time so much that I am finding it more difficult to actually connect with other people; although I really doubt that.  Perhaps I am more impatient with people and just don't invest that much energy in trying to connect.  Maybe.  I don't know.  But I do notice that sometimes even when the moment is right for a "connecting moment", it doesn't happen.  Like waiting for someone who is going to the same event you are and you both arrive early.  The other person walks a few steps with you and then says, "I'll see you there, I'm stopping here to meet the others and get some coffee."  Huh?  

Maybe I am just being a bit sensitive maybe, or maybe clueless.  I don't know.  But I feel a bit dismissed when things like this happen.  On the other hand, there are times when someone actually wants to do something with me or include me in an event and I just can't.  It usually either because I'm previously committed or I feel insecure or I just don't feel like it.  Now shouldn't a connection be made there?   It's not about you.  It may not even be about me.  It is just that particular time and circumstance.  That's all.  Of course, if it happens repeatedly, over and over, then I suppose a connection will be made, conclusions drawn and future connections not appear.

So I guess what I am saying that I realized tonight that connection is a basic human need.  I know I need to feel connected to others, but not anchored and/or tethered.  The trick is to find the balance, as it is with ALL things in the human condition.  Ugh.  Work.  That all said, I think I will unplug for now and connect with the pillow and my subconscious mind in dreamland.  There, I believe, we can really connect the answers we are looking for.  

And of course, I'll always have Facebook for that ultimate illusion of connectivity!  Just kidding, I love Facebook and, yes, I do believe it is a sincere form of staying connected, at least for me.

​

​The Chinese character for epiphany
​(insight).