Every morning, around 7AM, my brain starts yelling at me to get something "productive" done. I swear this nagging voice has carved a literal groove (or fifty) in my cerebrum over the years. Generally speaking, I acquiesce. I know that if I haven't started a meaningful project within a few hours, the voice will start harping about how I'm on the road to perdition.

I have to be mindful, because I find it exceedingly easy to slip into a shadowy world of unconscious work, like Frodo wearing the One Ring. I've lost entire days, hell, even weeks and months to blindly treading my well worn and rutted path of "being productive." It takes an incredible force of will to recognize this aspect of my personality, and to utilize it in a healthy, conscious way (for example, a morning meditation practice would be nice).

With all we have to do on our homestead these days, I'm not fighting the urge to work too hard. Today, I quelled my neurosis by digging a trench in our workshop foundation fill rock to install some electrical conduit, and a pair of outlet boxes. They'll be embedded about ten feet apart, exactly in the center of the building. It was a quick and easy project—just enough to silence the hound in my head for a day!