timpfest II: in preparation

[written saturday night, sept 1, after the close of the storytelling festival. sort of an expansion of this post.]

so, saturday.
right.

here's the thing.
i'm really good a multi-tasking.
don't applaud me; if anything you should wag your pointer finger in a scolding manner.
(don't do that though, cuz i've already done it to myself).

i can fit a ridiculous number of things into my day and i'm good at it.
but in the last few years, i've decided that there's a better way of doing things.

mainly, i think this sums it up best:

Have you ever been in an airplane and experienced turbulence? The most common cause of turbulence is a sudden change in air movement causing the aircraft to pitch, yaw, and roll. While planes are built to withstand far greater turbulence than anything you would encounter on a regular flight, it still may be disconcerting to passengers. 

What do you suppose pilots do when they encounter turbulence? A student pilot may think that increasing speed is a good strategy because it will get them through the turbulence faster. But that may be the wrong thing to do. Professional pilots understand that there is an optimum turbulence penetration speed that will minimize the negative effects of turbulence. And most of the time that would mean to reduce your speed. The same principle applies also to speed bumps on a road. 

Therefore, it is good advice to slow down a little, steady the course, and focus on the essentials when experiencing adverse conditions.

yes, airplane pilot deiter f. uchtdorf explained it best in that talk.

but i wasn't thinking about that last night before i went to bed.
because i'd carefully plotted out my day with overlapping events and impossible gaps of time from which to race between them.

i knew that it wouldn't work; i just decided i'd figure it out in the morning.

well. the morning came sooner than expecting.
5am brought with it lightning, lighting up my entire room every couple of seconds, accompanied by almost instantaneous raging, angry, ferocious clapping thunder.

sort of unnerving. quite exiting.
and very non-conducive to sleep.

i decided that i could do neither of the things i was planning on doing before yoga in this weather. so, with four outfits (covering all bases for the day's possible events), a bottle of water, and my trusty sketchpad, i headed out, late for my 8:30 yoga class.

yoga turned out to be super helpful
as it made me work physically and mentally very hard for most the class,
so that i could really physically and mentally rest for the rest of it.

because when i stretch my schedule out too thin, i feel like i do a half-baked job at enjoying and/or doing well the things which i've planned for myself.

and so after yoga, i decided to scratch everything on my schedule except for the festival. i figured it'd be better to just enjoy this one event.

because i had sort of successfully cleared my mind,
i was much more able to make mental space for the stories to settle in.

and because there was room to grow,
those stories could have somewhere to blossom in my imagination or my heart or my thoughts or wherever my mind appropriately catalogued each of them.

which will be incredibly helpful for when i want to cultivate my thought garden,
or just pluck a few out here or there.