What is the ideal day?
What does your ideal day look like?
Some time ago I tore through Marie Kondo's books, my second time doing so, in search of a wisdom I'd found ten years ago that I was, at the time, not ready to receive. Actually I still don't think I'm ready to receive it in some ways, but I can at least say I'm in a better place mentally now than I was then.
I'm paraphrasing right now because I don't have the books in front of me, but one of the exercises Kondo poses is to consider what one's ideal day looks like. What do I want my mornings to look like? The midday? The afternoons, the evenings? How do I want to begin and end the day?
On the one hand, I want to go wild with this. I want to throw out any preconceived notions about what a day "has to" look like or contain. I want to really, properly consider an ideal day. But on the other hand, I've...not quite accepted the fact that I have to hand over a significant portion of my time to someone else. More like resigned myself to it. There's so much to unpack with all of it, too much for this moment, so I will simply say that the other hand is holding an "ideal" day as it conforms to this limitation.
But I think considering this other ideal day is valuable, no less valuable than the wild dreams of a day unburdened by current constraints. I can compare the things that I would do even knowing I have less time to do everything I want and find what really, right now, matters to me in terms of having an ideal day. And then I can do them! Or try to do them! (This is especially useful for me because I'm most definitely a person who revels in having the idea to do something, but falters on the follow-through...)
Today I took a moment to consider that other day, that day with forced constraints on my time. It wasn't perfect (I would still lop off at least one hour of work time if I could) but it was surprising to see that I wasn't too far off from that ideal day already. I'm already doing things that bring me joy. And for the things I'm not doing yet, I can think of what to change so that I can do those, too.
Perhaps one day I can move closer to my unconstrained ideal day. Or perhaps there are other changes I can make that would transform that constraint into something that feels less like suffering and more like joy. I'll only know if I think about it...and if I try to act.