Spring is here, for a day at least. But there is that to-do list attempting to cast you under its spell. Who will win? Who should win?
As I write this, it is the early days of March. And because it is Georgia, it cannot quite make up its mind as to what season it should be. For today at least, the season is spring. It will change in a week or so when it reverts back to winter, and we see lows back in the 30s.
But today—it is spring.
Do I have a million and one things to do? Yes. Will I be doing them today? Absolutely not.
Like everyone else, whether you keep a physical or a mental list, we all have a tickler of some sort. Things to be done, places to go, people to see. Check, check, check.
It feels good checking those things off, even if they’re not necessarily pleasant things to do. I mean, who actually enjoys going to the DMV? (Aside from a deeply disturbed person.) But we do it, and we check it off. On to the next.
But then, a beautiful spring day lands flatly in our lap. Do you even notice it as you go about your daily to-dos? Does it make you pause and tempt you? Or does it stop you in your tracks and make you reevaluate your plans?
As you place one thing after another on your list, sometimes the priority and urgency of those items gets, well, conflated. After all, we have to get it done—it’s on the list! But picking up a prescription you’ve run out of doesn’t really have the same urgency as say, organizing your closet or cleaning out your email.
Should these to-dos on the list trump seizing the beauty of the day? Should the weekly cleaning, grocery shopping, and errand running continue as planned?
What if, and this is purely conjecture, what if we push those things to another day?
The fly-by-the-seat-of-their-pants type are probably saying “Heck yeah!” Meanwhile the planners and detail-oriented ones are gasping, “Oh the horror!” And then the ones in the middle are probably more like, “Well, it is pretty, but there ARE things to be done…”
There is no judgement here—society desperately needs all three types of people in this world to maintain balance.
But you should not get so lost in the list and planned events that you fail to live each day to its fullest. Especially in Georgia, where spring is more like a game of whack-a-mole between the seasons of choking pollen and humidity that melts you into a puddle on the pavement in ten seconds flat. (I say this with love in my heart; I am a native Georgian.)
Do this for me. Take that to-do list and place it aside (haphazardly or gingerly depending on your type). Go make the most of the beautiful day. Go to a restaurant with your friends and eat under an umbrella, take a walk through your favorite park, pull out that bottle of wine and read on your patio. Find a way to blend something you love to do but don’t do enough—with the perfect, spring day.
If you are reading this from another state or even country, and the view out your window is snow, rain, or storm—know your day will come. And when it comes, I hope you also put your list aside.
You’ve won the prize on the seasonal whack-a-mole game.
Go cash in.
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