My blog posts often spiral, sticking to a theme while doing a round robin among the three or four blogs. I'm thinking "time tunnels" (scenarios) in general have a spiraling aspect. The theme I'm sticking to here being "study habits".
Recall I'm one of those using "Global U" as a swap-in for "Spaceship Earth" i.e. I have a cradle-to-grave work-study model going, wherein we're always gear shifting into "scholar mode" i.e. "learning mode" if only to figure out where's the light switch.
It's not "student mode for the first half of life" followed by "teacher mode for second half of life" with "retirement mode" the final Elysium Fields. We're always jumping back and forth between student and teacher mode our whole lives ("learning a living"), the percentage of time spent in each mode having to do with lifestyle choices and/or demands quite a bit.
When some hear the word "mindfulness" it's a "bolt for the door" kind of experience because they're assuming it's yet another dharma talk about confronting one's own mindlessness, especially around relationships. Another "I'm a bad person" lecture (yawn).
But that's not what this is about.
We're talking here about cooking again, engaging in some project wherein cleanup is involved, such that what's left in the wake of said activity is not considered "a mess" by community standards. Loose ends get tied off. Puzzles get solved. Making way for new content, a fresh opening.
The Hanford campus, for example, referred to in the movie Oppenheimer, played a big role in the Manhattan Project, but in the big rush to "get it done" (i.e. build the atomic bomb), and not much planning and engineering was devoted to cleanup. The real price tag for this project was to be paid down the road, by we the as yet unborn. The subsequent commitment to pump up groundwater and to measure for leaks of radio-toxins, patching where possible, came after that first chapter.
However, being mindful may involve simply playing with your data structures, especially your queues and prioritizing scheduler, to keep cleanup happening all throughout preparation and serving of the meal, such that there's no big pile of pots and pans, scads of prep stuff strewn about, when it's over.
You were taking a relaxed, "clean as I go" approach, shifting modes. While the beans nuke, I put the cheese away. I'm always loading the dishwasher. Multi-tasking is not a sin, even if one is giving full attention to what's at hand. There's an interplay of focused and zoomed back, devoting micro and macro types of attention to a situation.
Wait, am I holding myself out as some mindfulness master, without having even been to chef school?
I'll be the first to admit I'm often more minion than leader when it comes to serving on a cooking crew. I do as I'm told a lot of the time. I might offer input or take more responsibility if they're looking to me as the experienced FNBer (that's Food Not Bombs) but, chances are, people more experienced than I are in the picture. Ditto at a Friends Gathering, thinking back to Camp Myrtlewood all those times.
What I'm suggesting is the practice of mindfulness need to go straight to old thought patterns you've been having, about this and that.
Leave the thought patterns to spiral along their lonely path and do something more productive than thinking, heaven forbid right?
I'm not dissing thinking, but if it's the same old same old, why not bake cupcakes at least?
Allow cooking to be your metaphor for whatever constructive hobbyist activity.
Develop mindfulness around something you're not doing just to better yourself i.e. because you imagine you have to or society expects it of you.
Start with an activity you would voluntarily engage in even without minding about mindfulness.
