It's Monday morning, and after a weekend of family activities and busyness, the house is suddenly quiet. I have a list of things to do, so quiet solitude isn't necessarily a bad thing, but some days, the silence is more striking than others.
This morning was one of the strikingly quiet ones. Never a morning person, I make it a point to approach Mondays slowly, trying to establish some sort of gentle groove after the weekend. The usual priorities for the beginning of the week are making sure I have everything together for my Tuesday evening class, and creating a plan for the week ahead. The peace and quiet that ensues after my family leaves for the day enables me to do accomplish those goals with relative ease....unless of course the washing machine leaks (two weekends ago) or the sewer pipe clogs (last Friday) or I get distracted by laundry and phone calls (daily).
Fridays, by comparison, are social days. I pack up my laptop and as soon as my family has left, I start the day at Starbucks. I meet friends before they need to run off to work, then pull up a table (and a chai tea latte) to do a few hours of my own work before meeting more friends for lunch. Then, I head home to soak up a bit more peace before the weekend kicks in and quiet becomes a rare commodity.
The quiet is nice, but I’ve already discovered that it’s possible to have too much of a good thing. I enjoy the lunches and coffee dates that punctuate my days because they help me to achieve balance - not just between introspection and extroversion, but between the life I have known and the one that lies ahead.
So as I sit here in a nearly silent house awaiting the washer repairman, I wonder what else I should try to accomplish while there is still enough quiet to concentrate. Not enough time to run through my presentation one more time, but too much time to squander on Facebook and Song Pop. There are things to put away and a meeting to prepare for, but neither of those requires the solitary peace I currently have at my disposal. A book? A nap?
Or simply counting my blessings. Quietly and with great appreciation.
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