I’m not really keen on the idea of being productive.

In fact, the way the word is often used kind of skeeves me out – a sort of implication that you have to earn your place in the world by doing a certain number of tasks per day.

(Am I reading too much into other people’s uses of the word? Possibly. But I think it is still worth exploring.)

I have heard a definitely of productive that I like though. Years ago, on the I Have ADHD podcast, Kristen Carder described productivity as ‘doing what you mean to do when you mean to do it.’

And I love that definition almost as much as I love defining being organized as ‘being able to easily find the things you need when you need them.’ I don’t remember where I got that definition or if I extrapolated it from someone else’s framing but I love it.

Anyway, I hate the generally perceived notion of productivity as busily earning your space in the world and so I feel a bit off about the fact that getting stuff done makes me happy.

Yet.

YET.

I think there is a difference in getting stuff done in order to check stuff off a list and getting stuff done because those tasks align with your purpose or because they contribute to your happiness.

If I write a story, I guess I have been productive but I didn’t write it just to cross it off my list, I wrote it to express something, to share ideas, to show up creatively in the world.

I’m not worshipping productivity, I’m doing something that aligns with my purpose in the world. And both my purpose and my task were self-defined.

And, in fact, many productivity gurus would probably say that it wasn’t productive because it didn’t make money.

Anyway…

I don’t have these thoughts fully developed yet but I know I am on to something that is important to me.

I really want to sort out this apparent (and internal) contradiction for myself.

I had lunch with my sisters yesterday.

We don’t get to spend a lot of time together these days so, thanks to a suggestion from my middle sister, we make a specific effort to get together for tea or for lunch in honour of our birthdays.

(It’s not that we never see each other otherwise but it’s tricky for the three of us to get together, it’s mostly two of us at a time.)

Anyway, my middle sister’s birthday was last week and we had lunch yesterday and it was fantastic.

Unless I consciously choose to consider them, the shorthand, the inside jokes, the similarities, the understandings, those things all stay blended into the fabric of our relationship, present but in the background.

Yesterday brought them to the foreground and I feel grateful to be able to notice them and to appreciate, again, how great my sisters are.

When I first woke up to snow this morning, I thought did someone change their snow tires too early?

Because, after all, we can just have weird weather needs to be someone’s fault, right? (This is a snarky joke I don’t really believe this.)

But then I found out that my neighbour had taken his summer car out already, and it’s only April, so clearly he has invoked the wrath of the weather gods and taken the rest of us along with him.

And I just loved this phrase that I cut from a magazine.

Over the past few weeks, my friend and I have been making oracle tiles and mine are almost complete.

Now I have just three things to do:

1) Decide whether to seal them with modpodge

2) Make a bag/cloth for them

3) Write an interpretation guide

I plan to use these tiles to brainstorm/guide my decision-making.