This is my 800th blog post.

How I’ve fit all these into my life over the last 6 years is worth thinking about. Especially today when I find myself nearly topic-less, and with time on my hands. I’m almost embarrassed to admit it. I’m not that busy. Blasphemy! Right?

I don’t have anything I have to do today. It’s been awhile since I’ve been able to say that. I tend to keep myself fully engaged.

I have a short list of projects waiting for times like this to fill in the gaps–trying a new recipe, packing up and storing my summer wardrobe, mining my journals for quotes and ideas.

Working on my memoir had been one of those time fillers. That’s moved onto my primary list of projects though. Since I just completed a chapter and sent it off to my writing coach, I find myself in this lull.

Talking this over with my wise accountability partner Sandy, she suggested I blog about it. “Not many people are comfortable being NOT busy. Why don’t you write about that?”

I am delightfully comfortable in this space. I saw it coming on my calendar after a super-busy week at the end of September. So I made plans.

• This afternoon I’ll visit a good friend in Connecticut who I haven’t seen since leaving for my trip around the world in late January.
• I’ve scheduled an eye exam on Wednesday since it’s been 3 years since my last one. That meant finding a new provider in New York City and scheduling the time to find the new location.
• I just arranged a visit to my friend’s sukkot for dinner on Friday to honor her holiday and our friendship.

These are meaningful, fulfilling and sometimes necessary (the eye exam) items that often get pushed to the back burner when I’m more fully engaged.

Here’s how I look at it. There are so many things I want to do and don’t because I’m too busy. Rather than manufacture busy-ness for the sake of being like everyone else, I’m taking this time to do all the things that feel like rewards now while my calendar allows. I know I’ll get very busy again, although I don’t know exactly when.

I love the (very shortened) story from Love, Medicine and Miracles by Bernie Siegel.  The patient prays to God to be saved. One by one, his doctors come to see him in the hospital. “No, no, no,” he tells them. “God is going to save me.” He dies and meets God in Heaven. “I thought you were going to save me,” he said. To which God replied, “I sent you the oncologist, the radiologist and the surgeon, but you turned them away.”

If God is giving me these lovely gaps in my schedule, I’m going to take them and enjoy every minute.