bleh. again. Or, a tribute to walks in the woods.

I had one of those days where I did basically nothing.  I've been battling myself to optimize my time usage and boost my productivity, which will be discussed in a later post, but it backfired today.  In some ways it was wonderful, but in other ways it was incredibly frustrating.  I painted for fifteen minutes.  I dumped out a drawer of clothes to put it back almost exactly as it was.  I made lunch.  These were the highlights of the day up until about 5 o'clock.  I found myself looking for games online and unread books on our shelves--I'm already reading half a dozen books, why start a new one out of boredom?  I was unfocused, undirected, and unorganized but trying to fill my time with some semblance of meaningful activity.  Awful.

So I took a walk.

A long, lovely walk through the woods.  I discovered a few new trails, watched the geese fly overhead, and sent some deer running with their white tails flashing.  It cleared my mind unbelievably well.  I need to take a walk every day.

I came home, made dinner, and am now able to enjoy/use the remainder of the day.  Tangentially, dinner was lentil soup with two tiny savory pastries for each of us.  The filling (which was really more like a topping, since they didn't keep their shapes): goat cheese, lime juice and spinach.  Way yum.  I even tried making my own pastry dough, which was pretty good for being a shortcut variety (lots of folding, but minimal chilling).  Eventually I'll try the full-fledged version when I get a marble board, but that's likely a ways off.  Regardless, life was obviously a lot better after the walk.