Ordinary Days
Why I’m making bacon jam
Journal: 24 January, 2025, morning.
Have you ever made bacon jam? I saw a recipe this morning for this and it looked and sounded yummy. On hot biscuits, with butter? I have to try making some.
This morning when I walked Henri at 4:30 AM, it was still frosty cold outside. The grass crunched, walking on it. I think though that today and tomorrow will be the last of this terribly cold weather and it’s going to warm up and then it’s going to rain for about six days according to the weather report, so if there’s anything you need to do before the rain, this is your official heads up to get outside and do it. Local folk, of course.
I practice changing the channel. Can you tell? It’s so healthy to do this. Just get up each morning and think about what you’d like to spend the day doing, and thinking about, and focusing on, whatever those things are, and then just do those things. Don’t let the world’s insistent noisy demands capture you and yank you around all day. Be the boss of your own self. I promise you’ll go to bed at night with more peace in your mind and heart. All the world’s things may still be out there, unchanged, but you will have been the captain of your own ship for the entire day and that’s wonderfully satisfying.
Me, I’m talking about lots of different things here in this forum before I lay this online stuff down for the day, and I’m going to repot a plant, and I’m going to finish reading a book in the new series I’ve discovered that is just perfectly delightful, and I’m going to write thank you notes and mail them for some of the kind things people did for us over the Christmas holidays, and I’m going to start planning what to make for our first Saturday Brunch that’s coming up on February 1st, and I’m going to start thinking about the Lenten practice I’m doing this year. Lots of stuff. Lots of different things. Variety is a good thing.
Walking Henri down the lane yesterday afternoon, three deer ran across about 10 feet in front of us and Henri achieved a new record in the high jump! 🤣 I wasn’t sure if he was going to survive the excitement!
I’m thinking again this morning about the gift of ordinary days, and all the small humble things we do to fill them and that that really is a gift whether we realize it or not. Well, that was awkward phrasing, but I think you know what I’m trying to say here. There are events that will rattle and shake our lives and do their best to push everything else out of our minds but we should always remember that we still have a life and we are living that life and that’s important too. It’s enormously important because remembering that and focusing on that keeps us grounded and settled in our minds, and remaining grounded and settled in our minds gives us much needed perspective, so we don’t become merely reactionary, whipped around all over the place by things we cannot (in the short term anyway) control or influence.
Along those lines, if you’ve not read The Art of War, by Sun Tzu, it’s illuminating.
I wish you a wonderfully ordinary day today, full of goodness and sweetness. I hope you choose to have that!
#journalingalife