Before this morning, I never knew there could be such a thing as an “easy” run. They were all hard, as far as I knew. I guess this means I’m improving.

Tomorrow I take the day off from running, as we’re heading to Delaware to do wedding stuff. First we’re meeting with the wedding planner and the deacon who’s marrying us, and then we split up and I head with my parents to meet the florist and the photographer, while Steve and his mom check out places for the rehearsal dinner.

Then my parents have dinner plans, so I’m going to bring a book with me so I can chill in the hotel lounge in case Steve and his mom need more time to finish up. Well, here’s the peculiar thing. I am hoping that I get time to chill in the hotel lounge, just because I think it would be nice and relaxing to a have a few moments by myself to read when I’m not bouncing around on an exercise machine or worried that I’m neglecting an undertaking or making myself late for something.

I have a very hard time doing nothing, which is why I’m currently wishing for enforced relaxation. Steve pointed this out to me last weekend as I was decluttering and rearranging. He said, “You’re always so … active.” In all honestly, it’s one of my favorite traits about myself, because I think it ties in nicely to being ambitious, which helps me to achieve my definition of success.

Of course, success means something different to everybody. One person’s version of success might be living on less and having more free time to do nothing, whereas that sounds like my own personal hell. Not the doing nothing part, necessarily, but having to live on less sounds a lot like pile of poo to me.

I’m not a material person, so it’s not that I need an abundance of money so that I can have an abundance of stuff. In fact, having less stuff always feels nice. But I would like to have more space, which in itself costs more money. Only I would like that space to be, not empty exactly, but certainly not bursting at the seams with stuff.

Besides, if I'm out buying too much stuff, then it interferes with how I envision my retirement:

I kid. By the time I retire, we’ll all use debit cards and physical money won’t exist anymore.

Boy, there’s a tangent for ya.

Anyway, my point is that a small part of me hopes that Steve and his mom take their time on Saturday so that I can be forced to sit around and do nothing far from home where I won’t be able to tackle a project. I don’t mean that I want to rot there alone for hours on end while I forlornly wonder when I'll get to eat dinner, but an hour or two wouldn’t kill me. Of course the book and the magazine I plan to bring serve as research for personal projects, so this won’t exactly be idle time.

Baby steps, people.

I'm really loving this Zen Habits web site that my friend Paula directed me to. I had been feeling sort of panicky lately, with our old bed sitting in the living room and the state of our home being slightly off-kilter. But the old bed isn't hurting anybody (while the new bed is totally amazing by the way), and so I can ignore the old bed leaning against the wall while I focus on other tasks that I need to accomplish in the interim.

I am really keen on making the place like a totally serene environment, with very few items gracing the surfaces. Since so much will have to be "put away", I also want those items to be perfectly organized so that I always know where everything is. I want to exercise my OCD and just run rampant and get rid of anything in the apartment that's not totally necessary.

I want all the clothes in my closet to be items that are flattering, and so I only want to keep the clothes that I love. Let me beat this into my skull: I don't need a volume of clothes. I only need to keep what works for me. I have a few outfits that I pull out time and again, try on during the scramble of my morning, decide I look BLAH ... and then for some reason, I hang this crap back up in the closet so that I can waste more time another morning when I don't know what to wear. It's time to make a break from that routine. I don't need an abundance of clothing. I only want to keep quality items. How many different ways can I say this to myself? Self, are you listening??

I think I got it now.