A Splinter and Other Things

I made my 4 hour goal of (mostly) 100% concentration on writing. Considering I pretty much had the whole day to do it, that's fairly pathetic, but I did it. Despite the fact that things went awry at the start. I had chores left over from yesterday to do, which included mopping and vacuuming. Before I did those, I noted that the porch connecting the back door to the back yard needed sweeping. In the process of doing that, I picked up a rough wooden block in order to move the door mat and a splinter slid into the middle finger of my left hand.

So then I had to get it out. By myself. It was teeny. I had to have a magnifying glass to see it, but I had to hold the magnifying glass in the same hand I was digging the splinter out of, and still see it. This was a challenge. I wrapped the handle in a towel, which helped to position it, but the splinter was in there pretty deep. Pretty soon I had a small, bloody excavation, but the splinter was still in there. Then I found a spot of sun by the window and brought my little operation over to the window sil. Not exactly comfortable.

After a long time (15 minutes?) I began to think I wasn't going to be able to do this alone. So I went to the Lord. I can't do this alone, Father. I need some help. I don't want to wait all day for Stu to come home, so could you please do something now?

I went back to my spot of light on the window sil, and shortly discovered it was fading. But a new spot appeared on top of some file boxes. Much more comfortable. Brighter. Within minutes I had the thing out. So. Some could say I would have gotten it out anyway, but I know I had help. In fact, I'm sure of it. I'm suspecting my guardian angel of having a hand in it, because the splinter was really tiny, really in deep, my hands were clumsy, I could hardly see and somehow, it just came out.

After that I did do the mopping and vacuuming, but left the bathroom for another day. By then it was 9:30 and I still hadn't eaten. I thought I would work while eating. And did. Sort of. Until I decided I needed to write in my journal.

Long story short, I didn't start until 10:17 and worked until 12:20. Then I did another stint from 2 to 4. Sort of. I think I did some Internet reading during that last bit. It was hard today. My brain didn't want to work. When I was getting ready to begin, the resistance was great: "It's too hard, I don't know what to do, I can't even think about it without getting a headache, I'll never get it done on time, I have to go faster, I don't have the vaguest idea how to fix anything... I just want to run away."

But I didn't. I told myself the old standby -- just read the chapter. You don't have to change anything. So I did. I changed some things, moved some things around, left some really awkward confusing spots because I didn't know how to fix them but I did work. Not fast enough. Or rather, I don't feel like I made as much progress asI would have liked, or as I "should" have (except only God really knows how much that is). But I'm going to be happy that I did work through it, and take comfort in the "Progress not Perfection" slogan of Flylady.com. I definitely made some progress. Now I'd better quit and go to bed so maybe tomorrow my brain will be clearer and sharper than it was today (Today was better than Monday, but I was still pretty foggy).

~~~