This morning I woke up and wrote a paltry list, on a white post it with no adhesive backing. I purchased these post-its at Office Depot a year ago, and they have since been the bane of my existence. Post-its with no adhesive are absolutely useless because they can’t adhere to anything. I grab one out of the little cardboard box (the best part of the deal) and write things down. This morning it was a list.

This list, it was for things I still needed to get done for my trip. It was short, simple, to the point. I did not list things that I needed to get done around here, except for agility because I thought that my focus should be on trip details.

As I was writing this list, I had this thought that one of the reasons why we make lists is so that we can direct our energy in the direction it needs to go. There are only so many waking hours in the day, and only so much energy one has to expend during those waking hours. I further decided that my energy today would go into getting ready for my upcoming adventure.

Something went awry. After breakfast, Pete and I went outside to do the three April agility videos. This always takes a while. After that we took Hrimmi and Raudi out for a jaunt. Then we returned and I began doing maintenance stuff – stuff that because it was there, I could not ignore. Breakup is upon us – the late snowfalls were such that we could not keep up with the animal pen cleaning. My plan was to shovel out Stormy’s goat house so that she’d have a place to have her baby if it so happened that this happens before I get home. It turned out this was an impossibility because the front and back areas are icy. So I instead started cleaning the outside pen area.

I was interrupted by the arrival of Josh, our farrier, who did four barefoot trims. I ran back and forth, getting horses and also brushing them. After his visit, I resumed cleaning the goat pen and then did a portion of the chicken pen. The area under their roost was a mess. From there I moved on to horse pen cleaning – as with the goat pen, the shit is surfacing.

I also cleaned the front area and then went and put away all my agility equipment. Then I separately took Tinni and Tyra for rides around the loop.

After dinner – this is when I began to tend to packing related incidentals. Pete posted videos and also put my vet tech notes on my hard drive. I am now about ready to go – I have a few little things to do – they are on the back side of the post it that I made my morning list on. I think that if, say, I’d sat down and really thought out my day’s plans, that I would not have felt so rushed this evening. Matter – it can neither be created nor destroyed. It is what it is.

Next: 104. 4/14/18: The ABC’s of Listing: Focus