Sometimes it really is the simple things in life that bring the most satisfaction and order. A kind of sedative for the soul…

Tonight I made a special trip to my new downtown fitness studio for one simple reason. I needed to finish installing a shelf to the left of my workstation. A simple job that took me longer than it should have. Mostly, because it’s just this type of work that throws me the most off balance. Like an earthquake during my routine on the balance beam.

I should probably be at home with my family, and I’m headed there shortly, but somehow this job called to me this week. A week I’m spending mostly away from work. When you love your work, and the journey you find yourself taking part in, the lines between that work, family life, and everything else that matters, is blurry, like the view through my currently filthy spectacles.

Knowing now that this job is finished brings me a sense of satisfaction that I will carry through the rest of a nice long weekend. A weekend spent mostly under the thumb of tasks just as mundane as this one. This one, however, will complete my work station at the new studio downtown. An important and vital part of the process of ‘moving out’ of my old life and my old place, and into a whole new way of approaching my fitness career and my professional life as I move into 2012.

The clock ticks silently, the furnace fans numb the atmosphere, and I can barely hear the cars as they pass by my window. I wonder sometimes if there really is anything more than the simplicity I feel in these moments of solitude. No one else around to distract my thoughts. A new writing app on the iMac that eliminates all other technological distractions – except for the reminder on my iphone to enter the expenses of the day.

The only expense I really had today was the time I spent outside the bubble of this simplicity I feel now. Outside the present moment, where it’s so easy to forget that nothing else really matters.

I can almost smell dinner cooking, and I look forward to another chance to fire up the iron and prepare Laura’s scrubs for a day of work at the hospital. All of it producing a hunger in me that has nothing to do with food or productivity, and everything to do with the simple hum of life’s sweetest gifts – the ones we’ve had all along…

-John