Today’s Write Practice from 14 Prompts by Joe Bunting

Have you been present today? What do you do to “wake up”? 

THE PROMPT 

Reflect on your busy day and on the present moment. Write about it.

I think the busiest part of today was getting up and ready for work. Mulling it over, I can’t remember a time when getting up and getting ready for work wasn’t a busy time. I have no recollections where I slowly plod through my weekly morning ritual as if I had all the time in the world. I think hurrying up helps wake me up, though.

This present moment is peaceful. It’s the exact opposite of my morning ritual as I have recently returned from work and there’s always that ‘ah’ moment when I get to put my feet up and relax after my workday. I’m not too hot or too cold. I’m sitting fairly comfortably and I’m learning and growing in my writing craft. Behind my laptop screen there’s a lumpy body pillow and on that lumpy body pillow rests our Schnoodle. She’s dozing and content because we’re home from work.

There’s a little reading light clipped to the left corner of my laptop screen and it’s there to help me see my keyboard because I’m using an ergonomic one instead of the laptop keyboard. The ergonomic keyboard is better for me, but I miss the lit up keyboard that comes with the laptop. That has me thinking, I need to find an ergonomic keyboard with backlighting. Thankfully, it’s not too much of an issue since I’m a touch typer. But the light is not situated quite right. There’s a pretty but somewhat distracting reflection that hits the black screen of the TV in near distance. I’m too comfortable, so I don’t want to lean forward to adjust it. I guess it really isn’t that annoying.

I hear the faint hum of the air conditioner in the background and the sound of my husband’s laptop’s drive winding up and down to the left of me. I have muted the lighting, which is just the way I like it. That is one of my favorite inventions. Programmable lights. I love them. These lights are on a schedule. When I really want to create my ambient atmosphere, I turn my husband’s to a deep, almost royal blue and mine to a deep purple. What fun! Seriously, I’ve had these lights for a few years and I’m still having a blast with them.

A picture of myself clapping my hands in glee just came to mind and with that I remembered the good old “clap on clap off” invention. I thought that was amazing, too. I don’t think I ever had one though, and I’m wondering how good those were around kids. I clap a lot so that could be annoying. Light on, light off, light on, off, on, off. What happens when you double or triple clap?

Present in this moment means my mind is cataloguing what it hears near and far and what my eyes see near and the fuzzy stuff on the outer edges of my vision. I enjoy being present in this moment.