Slowing

Hurry hurry!
    I woke up yesterday with a clear vision of a different kind of Zentangle inspired calendar (other than the one I just printed). For almost a year it percolated, and I just never saw it graphically work out in my mind. Until yesterday.
    I say hurry hurry because I know I have the resources to kick this out before THIS year ends, or at least have it ready as the new year happens. I don't know if I'd be patient enough to wait till next year, either. But even with all that information, it's my intuition that tells me to move forward with it. Now whether it ends up getting done or not, we shall see.
    Because today is December 17, I don't have much time, and my tendency to hurry through the process will most likely end with something about the project that I may regret. You know, how if you blow dry your hair waytoofastinahurry, it usually doesn't do what you like it to do. Or you make some food really fast and it burns. Or if you swipe your credit card too fast you just have to do it again because it didn't take? 
   Not only does a conditional outcome of haste ("haste makes waste") often leave us unsatisfied, there is a whole aspect of the PROCESS that we miss. If I blow dry my hair in a deliberate way, paying attention to each movement, I will probably like the conditional outcome better, but more than that, I might enjoy the actual process of it... of just being in a moment. If I pay attention to what I'm cooking... taking time to do each step with an awareness, hmm... might taste better, but the actual cooking of the food would be more fun as well. Now the credit card, I always want to get that over with:) But really, every moment holds an opportunity to be real and wonderful in and of itself.
    
   Take your time and be with the moments. The process of Zentangle is a perfect exercise for slowing down. Because there is no planned ending, it's especially easy to let the moments be what they are. Each deliberate line, each slowly made mark, a moment. Each moment its own little world. Relish each one. Wherever that process takes you, well, it just takes you, and there you are.