I woke up late, which is not a typical occurrence for me. Typically I wake up early and then reserve my being late for those events that occur outside the house and require a more civilized person (which takes dedicated time each morning). I don’t typically start late, I just end up late. I know this about myself and as such try and make accommodations for it; but, during the summer when there is no school and the days are filled with writing my level of accommodation for being late has become quite lax.

Well, the days of summer are dwindling down, at least for those of us who live their lives semester by semester. That means I will have start preparing myself for more structured days on the outside (or in the outside world if you think the prior presentation of “on the outside” made it sound like I was in prison). No room to complain about that – it simply is what it is. I live a golden life and I know I have no room to complain. I do what I love, enjoy the people I work with, am surrounded by family and friends that are full of laughter and life and have been blessed with good health…oh, and I have a stockpile of coffee – what is there to complain about?

Yes, it is all good, but that was not where I was going with all of this. What I wanted to share was how my getting up late was related to my new favorite thing (someone call Oprah and tell her to put it on her “favorite things” list) – my daily blog. When I woke up late this morning my first thought was that I had slept through my traditional blogging time (which has come to be the time before 7 AM). When I realized that I might not have time to blog it had a profound effect on the speed of my movement.

What – no blogging? “No, no, no, no, no – there cannot be a compromise when it comes to my guilty pleasure, my gift to myself, my daily sanity saver”…that is the message that shot through my brain in a millisecond and wow did my brain deliver. I was out of that bed and down the stairs with both eyes open by the time you could say “Hello” (and I didn’t even run into a single wall). And miraculously I knew at that moment that “the process” – that which is involved in making me a fit citizen to deal with others on the outside – could be dramatically shortened if something of value was at stake.

Well, I felt like I had made a scientific discovery and should begin a journal article that very moment. There is a way to change ingrained patterns of behavior if the threat of not changing them results in a more significant loss than benefit. Now at this point I could go all theoretical on you, but I’ll refrain to avoid putting you to sleep. The point is, in a pinch, my body (and my mind that typically operates in full facilitation once brain activity begins – after the first cup of coffee) can shortcut “the process”.

Hallelujah and praise the Lord – that is good news! I have become attached to my blogging and it has been one of the best gifts I have ever given myself. And I mean that relative to all things – the mid-life crisis car, the jewelry, the vacations, the salon treatments, the cute boys I have dated, the husbands I have divorced – everything. Interestingly, the blogging is the only thing (at least out of the aforementioned list) that didn’t come with a price tag of sorts. And let me say at this juncture that while money cannot buy everything, it can buy some really cool things (I do not want to speak ill of it and put bad vibes out into my economic universe-I am still feelin’ the love for money). Yes, money is good for stuff, but being able to feed your soul is priceless.

It is a beautiful day in the new forty, filled with newfound awareness that truly the best things in life are free and one should never allow the things that bring them joy to be pushed to the sidelines. Now I am off to share all my joy and light with the world – let’s hope its not so overpowering that it causes folks to gag.

Day twenty-five of the new forty – obla di obla da

CC