This is the first week all summer that my son and I have not had to wake up to the alarm and be out of the house by 7am. In fact, it’s the only week that neither of us has anything to do or anywhere to be. So I am moodling. Moodling is my play time, my time to dream, explore, imagine. I do a lot of Internet surfing, reading blogs, looking at designs, analyzing marketing ideas, thinking about books to write and programs to create. I’m reading several books on my Kindle or listening to them on my Ipod while I walk or sit by the pool. I’m staring up at the clouds and appreciating the swirls of white against the bright blue sky. I’m sleeping late. I’m sleeping in that wonderful deep zone you can only experience in the hot sun by the pool or ocean, drifting off in the middle of the sentence you were reading. I spent nearly one entire day in my pajamas and rushed to get dressed before my husband came home from work. 
Some of you may think this is just pure laziness, but I am proud of my ability to moodle. I haven’t always been able to do it. I can remember taking a music appreciation course in grad school. The final exam was going to be listening to samples from several symphonies and identifying the composers and work. It was the hardest class I ever took! I had such difficulty listening to the symphonies, and focusing on them, so that I could learn them. I remember complaining about how hard this was to an older man in the class. He couldn’t understand what the problem was.
“The imagination needs moodling – long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling, and puttering. The people who are always briskly doing something may have little, sharp, staccato ideas, such as: “I see where I can make an annual cut of $3.47 in my meat budget.” But they have no slow, big ideas. And the fewer consoling, noble, shining, free, jovial, magnanimous ideas that come, the more nervously and desperately they rush and run from office to office and up and downstairs, thinking by action at last to make life have some warmth and meaning.” -Brenda Ueland, If You Want to Write
My greatest ideas have come after moodling. I understand and value the opportunity to putter away a week, lost in thoughts and possibilities. I have a great picture on my vision board of Einstein, staring off into space and slumped in a big leather chair next to a round desk completely covered in stacks of papers and books. I love that picture. It reminds me of the importance of moodling, thinking, mulling things over, and daydreaming for all of us, not just Einstein. I don’t know what ideas I’m hatching or how they will turn out. I don’t have goals or objectives, timetables or deadlines. Yet. Right now I’m just following breadcrumbs toward slow, big ideas. And loving every minute of the discovery.
Are you moodling today?
[author] [author_image timthumb='on']http://www.caramoulds.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/self-portrait9.jpg[/author_image] [author_info]Cara Moulds is a writer, photographer, former high school administrator and teacher. For private, personal, intimate writing about life, purpose, passion,spiritual expansion, education, parenting, and her experience in an intense coaching program, subscribe to The Letter. She co-founded Cool Blue Souls and writes weekly on spirituality, creativity, and personal growth for their Blue Read Book Club. Her fine art photography is on permanent exhibit at the Claudia Mayer Cancer Resource Center in Columbia, MD. Her prints may be viewed and purchased from her gallery, which is here.[/author_info] [/author]