🪂 Word to start the week: Glide

The cool thing about being a dad, I was telling Camdyn while putting on my shoes, is that we can wear anything we want.

She gave me that look again, the one you’d see from someone on a practical jokes show. I just kept tying my shoes and didn’t even care they were Adidas soccer shoes with black dress socks. With a Hornets jersey tee and grey shorts with a pattern of fish bones.

I can too, she finally said, and pull it off even better.

So it’s in moments like this I get a bit more clarity why I am these girls’ papa. Clearly, it’s to force them to think on their feet in ways no ordinary dad could do. It’s definitely not to give clarity to life, although I spend an awful lot of time in that sad endeavor, too.

I wanted to write a Monday post about Mindfulness, I was telling a friend later that day.

But not a Mindful Monday post. I love alliteration but Mindful Mondays and Taco Tuesdays are culturally forced and the kind of bastardization of the concept I kind of hate. It’s like, yes, thanks for the taco, but you put tofu in it, therefore, it’s ruined.

So what the hell am I trying to say?

What I’m after is the kind of discourse to start the week that is about everything and nothing at all, sort of a Jerry Seinfeld meets the Transcendental Beatles kind of vibe.

I love challenge and I love randomness. I hit up a random word generator for a target to wrap my meanderings around like bacon on a filet mignon (or at least like those red ribbons around bologna, depending on proximity to the closest paycheck.

The word: Glide.

I’ll relate the word glide to a week of events, growing comfortable in a job, then hitting a wall; feeling unsocial, then laughing with a stranger; wallowing in a state of blueness I found no desire to attempt to shake – then feeling it lift on its own.

If I could glide through life somehow, to balance the value of a mindful start with the urgency to not get bogged down and fall behind on my day while I’m cross-legged on a recliner listening to Dorsey Standish in my earbuds or groaning through a sphinx pose.

To glide would be the ability to know the unanswered messages and unsubmitted time cards and unchecked blood sugar are all there and that they’ll be tended to in due time. To be on your way somewhere and at the same time wholly fine exactly where you are.

I want to hold onto glide for the rest of the week.

Making promises

To glide is to make promises to yourself that aren’t pass/fail. I do that sometimes. I use promises to myself to guide me to efficiency or kindness or the better health that won’t leave my children without a dad before they should be.

I remember this last part a lot.

I’m a year younger than my dad when he died. Today I remembered how Tiger Woods’ life unraveled when his guide, father Earl, died too. It feels silly to assume these strong young women would go to pieces too at my loss but at the same time, why take a chance?

So I’ll make the easy promise to have that bowl of Frosted Flakes only if the glucose check comes back excellent.

I’ll change a promise from “be nice today” to “be nice today – and make note of the time when you break this promise. Tomorrow, go longer.” This is reasonable. My blue period gave me reason to shelter my own sunshine when the Lord knows the world needs it.

Not just mine, but yours.

How will I glide this week? I’ll just do something. One thing. Then move on. And pay attention to where you are. Whether it’s alone with your thoughts or close to a stranger or admiring the sharp neck line the lady at Great Clips in Indian Trail just gave you.

Because how are you going to glide into the rest of your day if you don’t?

What about you?  What’s a struggle you refuse to bring from last week with you? How can you glide more gracefully into this week?