Month after Month

     Written around the edges of this month’s calendar are times and dates for next year – appointments, meetings, house concerts, dinner engagements.  I’ve been transferring them to our 2011 “Extraordinary Chickens” calendar and feeling somewhat appalled that the months are already getting clotted up.
     I am put in mind of what my friend Diane wrote to me yesterday concerning a morning coffee date for today: “Can you join us?  I remember that spontaneity doesn’t work for you…”  And she was right.  I already have a plan for this morning.  As usual, I wish I could be in two places at once.
     Diane’s coffee date includes a new friend; my morning plan includes an old friend. I hope there will be many opportunities to pursue both relationships in the year ahead, for I am a firm believer in the old childhood round:
                                                 Make new friends,
                                                But keep the old.
                                                One is silver,
                                               The other’s gold.
     Meanwhile, having the two calendars spread out before me has been thought provoking.  All those notations are about fairly mundane and finite things.  There are seldom inked or penciled scribbles about important projects undertaken and certainly not enough white spaces to allow for completion or closure of the big ones.  That hoped for first draft of my book, for instance, doesn’t show up anywhere.  And what of the new history series planned for the Chinook Observer beginning in January?  Should I be blocking out time for it?  And where does that put “spontaneity?”
     “There aren’t enough hours in the day.”  “It’s all about choices.”  “I’m not getting any younger.”  “What are my priorities?”  “But, I want to do it all.”  Around and around the thoughts go.  Maybe by tomorrow I’ll have sorted some of it out and I can make a resolution…  Maybe.