Summer Playing

I hope to have some good fun this week with family and friends - that's what summer is for: Playing in the pool, the garden, and with art.

Monday is my day to reset for the week and get my ducks in a row - make some plans for health and home, and prepare for Grandson fun.

Agenda:
1. Read "The Sweet Spot"

2. Playtime plans

3. Big outdoor building project

1. Read "The Sweet Spot":

I'm reading this book by Christine Carter (2015), about "How to Find Your Groove". The thesis is that when we hit from our sweet spot we have optimum power and the greatest ease; out of the sweet spot we feel friction, exhaustion, and stress. We miss out on the feeling of flow.

The first chapter is From Working Overtime to Enjoying the Seasons. She talks about learning to "honor the natural rhythms of our days and our lives. ... We can take a school day approach to life, in which we work and learn and produce and create in predictable periods of time, and then we have equally predictable periods of play and rest and recovery."

She's talking about the everyday things, the simple pleasures and downtime. When life begins to feel stressful and too busy, slow it down with regular recesses for savoring a good sandwich, companionship, or a bike ride. "These 'non-instrumental' things require our time and energy; in return, they bring us real joy and, ironically, they increase our productivity."  

2. Playtime plans:

My playtime plans this week:

• Daily time for coffee in the garden, to daydream about nature-culture and take pictures.
• A visit to my friend's house to share about our projects.
• Making onion soup and pasta salad.
• Playing with watercolor with my youngest grandson, making butterflies.
• Drawing a lego city and building the buildings, with my oldest grandson.
• New moon retreat to the river to get my feet wet.

3. Big outdoor building projects: 

My house care theme for this month is to get started on some big building projects - repair a windowsill, clear out the studio and build new shelving, repair the back deck, and reorganize the outdoor storage area. These are joint projects and my role is organizational and visionary.

This week I plan to:

• Measure shelf space in studio.
• Research outdoor storage bins
• Draw plans for outdoor storage.
• Get bins for studio.
• Begin to organize and pack top shelf supplies
• Schedule a demolition day!