it pays

Today was one of the longest days I’ve had in a while. First things first, I had a date this morning with my sister, and as it happened, it got canceled. Very sad. We had planned to do our posting together this morning, and celebrate old times. Although she couldn’t make it, nonetheless I still had to get it done. So I did, and then I began work. Work includes QA testing for a nationwide product that must be completed before this Sunday, research on options reducing business expenses, corresponding with programmers, companies, potential employees, and naturally, FedEx, among other things. I had my own personal tasks to attend to aside from my work, and so things were busy as you can imagine.

Between breakfast and lunch I worked, hard. I also did my Esperanto lessons for the day, and surprise surprise! I am now finished with my first course – that’s ten lessons including vocabulary, grammar, and reading tests. I am very glad to have the basics down now, and very excited to start the second course.

Between lunch and dinner I meant to walk to Dilworth coffee shop with my sister, but as we were about to leave it began to rain. Just our luck. So we stayed home and made me a frappuccino and some amazing pumpkin oat bars, and played speed scrabble. It was so much fun. Afterwards I finished up my work (or at least as much as possible) and cleaned up my workspace. While i was at it, I took some time to spiff up the corner of the office which, for about a year or two now, has been a heaping mess of cables, CDs, video cards, paperwork, coupons, screws and twist ties, and garbage. It was overwhelming and gross. However, after an hour of hard and dusty work, I managed to fill two new cd cases, a jar of screws, a box of twist ties, and a file folder for the papers. It was well worth it. The entire workspace looks incredible, and so clean. The end result was double pay this week which was very encouraging.
The main point is that it pays to do the extra work. Go the extra mile, do that hard task you’ve been putting off for weeks, and make it worth it. Don’t do a poor job of it, do the best you can!

M.fs

“when you take a walk, make it worth it”

Is it odd to anyone else that I know how many steps in takes to get to the church down the road and back? It takes exactly 1,762 steps – I counted. That’s scary to even me and I’m the one who’s doing it! Now that’s scary… not like, “Ah! That’s scary!” but more like “Whoa, that’s scary.” you know? Well anyway, it is the perfect walk I’ve decided. I walk out my back gate and walk on the shaded sidewalk past many fences, until I reach the sweet and serene, usually deserted church. The parking lot normally has a bus parked in it, but other than that it’s completely empty. The strange thing is, there’s always people in the office buildings attached. No cars… people… strange. There’s a ball field at the back of the church, and my favorite thing to do is walk down the usually muddy and grassy slope till you reach three sequential benches. There’s one I always sit on, and ironically, it’s the only one that’s broken! The best thing to do is to sit there for a little while in deep thought, maybe do a little mental-writing (“the need to write when there is no paper around”). When my breath is caught, and my legs aren’t tired anymore, I walk a little further down towards the dugout, and walk quietly, meaningfully through (memories, there’s nothing like them), and then walk up each set of bleachers, and of course, slide down the railing of all of them – it’s a lot of fun. Then I amble slowly back to the sidewalk, and start back. In all it’s about a 23 minute walk, not counting the down time. When the sun sets just behind the ball field, a warm breeze is softening the crisp, cold air around, the birds are singing quietly, and few cars are passing on the street behind, it’s like a little taste of heaven. It really is beautiful, which is why I like to go so often. I’d spend all my time there if I didn’t have to work and maintain my house. Oddly enough I’ve never eaten a meal there, as many times as I’ve walked there during lunch hour. Perhaps today I will.

M.fs