What does my ideal day look like?

What does my ideal day look like?

Jennifer Lee asks this question in her book The Right Brain Business Plan. (You may recall that I mentioned it in my Left Brain vs. Right Brain and How I Keep Myself Sane blog post from July 22.)

So what does my ideal day look like? Writing, writing, writing and more writing. That's assuming I have a publishing contract and I need to write novels to satisfy the insatiable appetite of my readers like you. 

There's more to the story, however. Jennifer Lee asked me to visualize my perfect day, including smells and other sensory stimuli.


Whoa. Hold on a minute. I'm not into "visualization" and "manifesting." That sounds a mite bit too hippie dippy. Then again, "visualization" and "manifesting" might be the new way of saying let yourself dream.

Alright. I'll bite. Here's what I visualized:

I would wake up to the quiet of the morning, walk out to the barn to say hello to the animal babies as the sun burns off the morning mist. The air heavy with the scent of lilacs and roses. Maybe honeysuckle.

Birds chirp as I care for the animal babies, including a horse, a small flock of sheep (raised for their wool, not to eat, mind you) and a small flock of chickens. Maybe a goat because they are so freakishly cute! I toy with the idea of a jersey milk cow, but I'm reluctant to commit to twice a day milking no matter what. Check out my Pinterest Board "Winged Thoughts" for a visual aid.

After the animal babies are fed, watered, and let out to pasture, I would get breakfast for the family. TEACHER HUSBAND would get himself off to work. I would get the boys off to school and then go horseback riding around my property.Write for a bit. Eat lunch. Write some more before the boys came home from school. Then it will be snack time, homework time, dinnertime, more chores, including bedding down the animal babies for the night. Get the boys to bed.

Conclude the day by sitting on the porch absorbing the deep quiet saturated with the scratch and hum of dozens upon dozens of katydids and locusts thrumming in the air, punctuated by the occasional bleat of a sheep or the neigh of a horse.

I most certainly would not be working in retail as my day job like I am now.

Here's the rub. If this is my ideal day, then why didn't I make choices along my life's path that enabled this? Why did I end up on a quiet cul-de-sac in a bustling suburban neighborhood that is trying to develop itself into a hot urban center? (They want to increase density by 30% Yikes!)

If I start to make choices now so I can course correct, then how will that affect TEACHER HUSBAND, who doesn't want to live on a farm. What about the boys? What about our great neighbors and our friends here? What about my family who are not that far off? What about my church family?

Is this really my ideal day? Or do I have an envious heart, coveting a lifestyle that I don't have, unable to appreciate what I do have right here, right now? If I really and truly see myself living and working a hobby farm and if I think I was meant to have it all along, then why did I spend the first half of my adult life running from it?

Maybe you have to deliberately deviate from your path in order to confirm it's what you want. Perhaps.

I don't have an answer to any of these philosophical questions. We can't afford to move anyway. If we were to sell our house, we might be able to break even but would have nothing left as a down payment for a quiet little hobby farm.

In the meantime, I'll keep daydreaming about a flock of baby sheep. I'll borrow Miss Joan's horse every time I go for a horseback riding lesson. And I'll keep writing, writing, writing. I can do that from anywhere.