Sometimes The Easy Way Out IS The Right Way In

My wife and I has a favorite Netflix show that we like to watch every night, for the past few months. After we put both of our kids to bed, we boil water, make our favorite tea (mine is peppermint with honey and lemon) and we sit on our blue couch and watch this fictional story about a President of the United States that demonstrates courage to express his vulnerability and compassion towards every single human being on the planet. It’s almost like the President (in the show), read and understood every book that Brene Brown wrote. It’s inspiring, and probably the only political theme show that I have ever seen. I’d rather watch this show than the news.

But here’s the thing that happened tonight: I had no desire to do all that.

What I wanted to do was to do the dishes, fold the laundry, write my nightly journal, and then write THIS article.

It was SO important that I had to setup the bedroom in the exact way that it was setup in the past when I wrote my article two weeks ago, with the hopes that I will get into the right mood that will deliver the inspiration to write the best thing that reflected my week. Dimmed lights, with my two hands on my favorite $200 old school Thinkpad laptop that I found on eBay. In which I bought just for the keyboard. Well this plan didn’t work at all. I ended up being flooded with anxiety, and guilt for telling my wife to leave me alone to concentrate. And I ended up spending the time to take some breathing exercises to calm myself down.

At the end of my meditation, I came to a conclusion that … this week, I will not write anything. I’m just going to skip it. Better late than never.

Instead, I went downstairs with one bag (out of 4) of clean laundry to fold in the living room, made my tea and then clicked that Netflix button on our Roku remote. My wife fell asleep on the couch because she was too tired, and instead of continuing my guilt by skipping this moment to go up to bed, I decided to continue to watch the latest episode.

After we finished the episode, I felt calm, and clear. I realized that the solution to finishing my article was to simply … continue, with, life. Our ritual was there for a reason and even if it seemed that I wouldn’t have the time to actually write anything, in truth, there is always time to do something that is important to you. You may not think there is enough time, but that extra minutes and seconds always reveals itself, when you find clarity.

In my case, at 9:40pm, it was obvious to me that if I didn’t start writing my article, I won’t have the time to write it tonight, because I’d want to make that tea, and watch that TV show and sleep by 12:00 pm. But in truth, as I returned back from meditation, to the moment, that particular moment and focused on what is it that was really important for me: time with my wife, time for my self, I revealed to myself that I had the perfect article to write upon at 11:30pm, which was about EXACTLY the writing experience itself.

Life is complicated. That’s for sure. Some say we are the ones that make it so. And it can be very true.

But when we do, just remember … sometimes, just sometimes, the easy way out is the right way in.

And we just hit 12:00am.