Per Linda:
Your prompt for #JusJoJan the 20th and Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “in a nutshell.” Use it as an idiom, or use it literally. Enjoy!

In a nutshell is the best way to eat nuts, not salted, not cooked. And hard to eat a lot at a time, which can be my way if I don’t have to work at it! Maybe that is something to look at in life. I could go out and buy a lot of socks. But my body won’t be as happy as the ones I make myself. I thought it was just me, but my son and brother both told me they love the way the sock feels like it’s hugging their foot, like a little massage. I feel that way, too.

I do seem to be a paradox, though, as I look at this line of thinking. Though I love the process of learning music as opposed to buying and listening to it, and I love diamond painting instead of looking at magazine pictures, why do I find such laziness within? Shouldn’t I be happy with a process no matter what?

A friend and I were talking about how some things seem too much work. The first and silliest example is when I am playing a game, and I have to leave the scene and click five times to find myself in a totally different scene. I sigh like it is a lot of work. I find myself complaining: why do I have to go all the way out there? In this case, the game is Mystery Case Files®: Return to Ravenhearst™ Collector’s Edition. If you play it, you know there is a place where you need to leave the children’s town to go back to the well to get the knife. FIVE clicks. Yet it seems like so much work! It definitely says more about me than it does the game. I love the game, though I have played it so often. It is mostly boring and just something to do when I need to waste time. If you’re curious, here is what it looks like:

But I lost my stream. It is that often I feel something is too much work. Even though when I do the work of most tasks I am satisfied that I did it. I rarely am unhappy when I put in the time and effort.

Some things feel unproductive. Knitting, there’s an item when done. Riding the stationary bike? I go nowhere. But I have seen proof it is working just in my energy levels, and my abilities to do certain things have improved. But that box of things I need to go through… Seems like five clicks too many! I need to work on my brain! That’s it! In a nutshell!