Daily life, work you chose and profess to love, domestic detail, the call and reply of other people’s lives, the beloveds mixed in there with everybody else who has a claim on you, the sheer wants and requests, always heard as demands, the gnats of need buzzing. Deadlines. Delivering. Always. Not to mention the weights of the past, hanging like bells gonging from your wrists.
~ Patricia Hampl, The Art of the Wasted Day
Notes. Photo: Thainá Reinert (via Your Eyes Blaze Out). Related Posts: It’s been a long day
Live & Learn 
Funny…I am in the middle of writing a blog that is overstimulated and thoughts of a never-ever-after. Must be Tuesday. Thank you, friend.
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Hey Claudia. We are simpatico!
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Reblogged this on It Is What It Is and commented:
Yes, it’s been a long day … time to chill and relax!!
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It is!
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I read this with a pang because I did in fact waste the day. I wish I had done more. That desire is my problem and my remedy.
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So get this Elizabeth…with you
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Bin there. Wish I could have my time back so I could say, “No.”
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Yes Anneli. Your thought reminds me of:
“Onward to the night, which is to say insomnia, cell phone on the bedside table, the mind drilling away with yet more frantic interior list-making. Don’t forget! Remember to … Have you … Did you … ? Whole decades can go this way—and have—not just in domestic detail, but awash in the brackish flotsam of endeavor, failure and success, responsibility and reward. My work, as I say with foolish vanity. Deadlines piled upon deadlines. That devilishly apt word deadline, the heart seizing as if shot, hands wringing for a reprieve—a week, a day? But delivering. Always delivering. You can count on me. That, in fact, is the problem. I never learned to follow Nancy Reagan’s one piece of good advice: Just Say No.
~ Patricia Hampl, The Art of the Wasted Day (Penguin Publishing Group. April 17, 2018)
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I love the term… ‘brackish flotsam of endeavour’…. so apt
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Yes. Loved them too…
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I’m practicing it more and more.
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And I’m working on it…so far away, so far.
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The Weight
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Such great words. Had to smile (a bit smugly, sorry) because my Tuesday was exceptionally Ok-ish 😉 A few demands I was able to fullfil without actually ‘killing me’, a few offers of help which were accepted with gratitude, time for a ‘wander about’ and preparation of very appreciated food…. A good day, stressless, sunshine, peace! Too rare….
But then I’m not at home, the usual domestic chores forgotten, I’m in my home country for a few days, and all I do, offer, propose are greatfully received and taken with thanks and praise; so what is not to like. Of course, once I should be living here again full time all that will change and pressure will be put on me again.
This Patricia Hempl – I think one could quote every sentence, every paragraph and find something to hold on to. An amazing person.
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Smiling. Yes Kiki. I’ve painted this blog with her words!
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I’m reading this now. Waiting for her to go back to the space under her childhood tree and watch the sky.
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Yes….
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