Lynaea invited me to be a guest blogger in her blog. Well, actually I might have asked her if I could a long, long time ago. But I am thinking that her recent invitation is because she adores my writing not because she has to paint four pictures a week for three weeks in a row to get ready for her art show.
While Lynaea is hard at creative work, I have been puttering. And it is this that I want to write about. I adore puttering. I believe in puttering. I am happy puttering.
So what is puttering? Puttering is all about scale. It is doing little jobs around the house. It is reodering, fixing up, tidying up, sprucing up, or dolling up in small increments instead diving into large, lumbering, or ambitious tasks.
Puttering has nothing to do with redoing a kitchen, painting the house, or sending out Christmas Cards to all one’s acquaintances. It is about finite tasks that give one an immediate sense of accomplishment and satisfaction.
My puttering accomplishments for this week: 1) Weed. Weeding is kind of like sweeping, vacuuming, or mowing the lawn. In a short amount of time, your puttering task makes a big difference in how things look. For a little investment of time, talent, and energy, you can feel the satisfaction that comes from making a visual, in-your-face difference. So in the morning when it is cool, I putter in the yard. I pick a place, a fairly small area with boundaries, and go to work on the weeds. Within 15 minutes, I am energized by what I have accomplished. I am not worrying about the yard as a whole, but focusing on just that one little area. Sometimes, mind you, I get so encouraged by how good the garden gets that I start working on another area. If I ever start to feel guilty about spending too much time in the yard instead of going in and helping with breakfast and the morning cleaning, I just remind myself that I am puttering and will go in very shortly to help out.
2) Find-the-perfect-something-to-hang-on-the-wall-in-my-bedroom-without-spending-money. Since my bathroom is being torn apart because of mold and my office at work is being torn apart because of asbestos, I had at my disposal (in fact, I needed to find a place to put all the stuff that had to be moved out) a lovely collection of white plates and children’s art. I confess to spending at least 45 minutes on this task because I just couldn’t get all the plates to be exactly 4 inches away from each other. This task almost moved from of puttering into work. It was a close call.
3) Paint the front door. We just had our house painted (because we rent, we didn’t have to do it ourselves or even pay for it). We are allowed to choose two colors, which we did, and then I went out and bought a different color for the door. But it just didn’t work. Mentally, I tried to get it to work. But…the yellow-green demanded a different color. It wanted periwinkle/lavender. I couldn’t fight it anymore, and so I painted the front door “lavender” (for those of you that know me, you are probably in shock over this choice. I will probably address it in my second guest blog if Lynaea let’s me continue). It only took me about 15 minutes to put on Coat One, and I have to wait for another puttering date to put on Coat Two. Thus I have the anticipation of puttering some time later this week (the great thing about puttering is that you don’t have to schedule it in advance).
So here is the thing. Even though I am on vacation and dedicated to relaxing, rejuvenating, going to the beach, and hanging out with family, puttering allows the Type A in me to feel accomplished even in the midst of these lazy summer days. Some call it balance. I call it bliss.
