From the moment I woke up this morning I could feel the quicksand.  Do you know the feeling?  Where even the thought of doing the next anything feels like slogging through three feet of pudding wearing flippers?

I filled my coffee.  Sat down.  Scrolled through updates on my phone.  And then just wanted to crawl back into bed.  Everything just felt too… hard.

I’m not sure when something in me decided to fight back.  I forced myself to get up, pulled out some exercise clothes, found my shoes… second guessing myself the whole way. Right up until the moment I stepped outside the door and onto the front porch.  From that point I was committed.  Still not happy about it but committed.

One thing I have done in the past on my walks is take photos.  It helps me to stay grounded and in the present moment.  Aware.  Today I decided to try something I had used for a “quarantine school art lesson” with Benjamin.  I had given him a color and he took photos wherever he found that color along our walk.  We talked about perspective and framing and really were able to soak up the time.

Now, I know if I were to just pick a color, I would pick one of my favorites and I really didn’t want to just gravitate toward the regular or expected.  So, I pulled up a random color generator (http://randomcolour.com/).  The color that popped up was a yellowish, kind of light goldenrod. 

Yellow?????!!

Really??!

Well, sh*t.

Yellow was definitely not the mood I was wearing.

But I have this weird little obsession with “meant to be” and so I decided to roll with it.  I pulled out my phone and took a photo of the next yellow thing that caught my eye.

It’s curious to me how forcing my spirit to focus on something real and present, right in front of me, will draw me out of myself and my tendency to get stuck in the muck of my mood.

As my eyes began to fix on the world around me, my senses sharpened, and my sluggish energy seeped away.  I found beauty in places I wouldn’t have looked before.  In peeling paint as well as the flowers. 

Toward the end of my walk I happened upon a yard full of yellow accents of all kinds.  A woman was tending the yard and I commented on the cheerfulness her yard exuded.  We started chatting, keeping our social distance but obviously both of us hungry for some human interaction.  I left with some gorgeous yellow gourds that had grown in her yard, some lovely photos, and a new friend.

I continued home and suddenly realized that my mind-set had been thoroughly transformed.  I was ready for the rest of my day now.  The three feet of pudding had receded, and the flippers were nowhere to be found.

The thing is, it’s hard to be blue around yellow.