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I just got up to pour myself some Mate and paused to do some stretching because I just feel so tight. I little cat and cow to start. I realized that I was just moving through the motions and not really feeling it or breathing. It brought me back to trying to open the door to the car I was borrowing the last few days. The key doesn’t work on the driver side, so my friend told me to open it from the passenger’s side and then reach over. Easy enough. Then she demonstrated that you have to fiddle with the key a little bit on the passenger side for it to open. No problem. Except that on the second day that I was borrowing the car that side completely stopped working too. I would try for 5 minutes, standing in the pouring rain, trying to get the key to work. After the first 30 seconds or so of taking the key in and out, I would start to stress. So, I took advantage of this time by breathing. Yes, I am always breathing if I am alive, but I haven’t really been taking conscious breathes lately. I have barely done yoga and when I was it was more like ok let me do a pose that will alleviate tension in my shoulders or hips. I wasn’t actually taking time in any poses and I was not breathing in them. So, I took some deep inhales and exhales in time with pushing the key in and out. Still couldn’t get the door open. Annoyance. Okay, how about some acknowledgement? I proceeded to acknowledge the car and the door for all of the work it was doing to get me where I needed to be and so on. Still nothing. So, I found myself giving up and opening the back hatch and climbing through to the front, popping back out the front door, closing the hatch and then returning to the passenger seat. This really wasn’t too hard as the back seats were folded up and away since I was moving stuff in and out of the car. As the day went along, I had to shift my purchases around to keep an open path for myself to walk through. It was quite amusing. I kind of imagined myself jumping into some magical portal.

The car door got me thinking about things people just get used to so they don’t get around to fixing or changing. My friend told me that the key has never worked in her driver side door (she bought the car new). I believe that she took it in to be fixed when it first started acting up, but then I guess when it started to happen again she just gave up. She has owned the car for 6 years. Yes, she leads a busy life as I am sure almost everyone says about themselves and it takes a chunk of your own personal time to get things like these attended to and we just don’t have that kind of time. In reality the time it may take could be making a phone call to the car dealer (5 min. max?) and then dropping the car off and picking it up later. Which means you actually have to make a request of someone else to give you a ride or you have to spend some of your precious free time sitting in the waiting area. These days most dealerships are conviently located next to malls and other shopping areas and some even have free wifi in their waiting areas. So, why do so many people put these things off? I guess money comes in the picture too. Who knows how much they will charge to fix it. But. Like I said this silly car door experience really got me present to all the things that gets pushed aside to deal with later. None if it is life or death and yeah, we have better things to do with our time, but why not just deal with it and get then you won't have to deal with it anymore.

I remember early last year putting little notes around my living area to remind me to live life fully. One of them read, "WHY PUT OFF DOING WHAT YOU CAN DO RIGHT NOW?" This reminded me to do little things like clean up after myself, send out an email, fix things, all sorts of things. So why not, just do it now?