Busy morning. I Wrote Morning Pages, scooped litter, shaved, dressed, did pushups, went to the grocery store for the week's shop. I washed two month's grime off my car and mold off the the shower. I made potato salad, washed dishes, and scoured the sink.

Can you tell both of my daughters just left for college?

Some of this is distraction therapy. The empty nest. Some is just being productive and enjoing that. Enjoying it almost to distraction.

Scrubbing the sink, I heard myself think, if I do this every day, I'd be much happier.

I stopped there, caught myself leaving the moment.

What I'm doing now is more than planning for later. Thinking what I have to or should do takes away the joy of this moment.

Right this moment, I'm sitting in the back yard, listening to music (Wind & Wuthering side two). The dog, a Zen master, sniffs the slightest breeze. I'm catching myself planning the editing and revision instead of just, in this moment, writing. I listen to my fingers on the keyboard, focus on the magic of these words appearing one at a time.

Even so, I find myself planning. Keep returning to the moment, I tell myself, then smile at having left the moment to plan my return to it. Leaving the wondrous joy available to me perhaps only in this moment.

Then I breathe, watch the dog roll upside down in the grass, and stop with her four legs spread out and up toward the sun. It comes to me then that these moments and this joy abound all along the way.