When I woke up this morning (as I write this), our furnace had stopped working again. It's been doing this intermittently recently, despite the fact that it is only a couple of years old. We will go to bed at night with it working just fine. But sometimes, at some point throughout the night, when our Nest Thermostat adjusts the temp down, it never comes back on. When this happens, I spend a couple of hours trying to troubleshoot the issue. I reset the Nest, toggle on/off the master power to the furnace, toggle on/off the little switch for the blower motor inside of it, and all combinations of steps thereof. Eventually, I give up. I call a furnace repairman and schedule a service call. I drag a space heater down from our unheated third floor office. Then, in all the cases this has happened before, just a few minutes later the furnace magically starts working again. Almost as if the threat of repair or replacement has scared it into compliance.

Just a few minutes ago I scheduled the service call again. So far, it is still not working.

Then, just as I was doing the furnace restart shuffle, I got a call from Beatrix's school. She ended up vomiting shortly after arriving. I, of course, went and got her right away and brought her back home. She has been nauseous and continuing vomit off and on since. She has a bit of a fever and it seems to be rising. Meaning a trip to the doctor is likely if this continues.

In the mean time, the furnace guy has shown up. Now I'm double tasking between him and her. Oh, also, I have appointments I'm trying to reschedule due to these sudden unexpected events. I'm trying to get some critical work done in every moment I can steal. Basically, any plan I had is now out the window. And, due to the rescheduling and shifting, it is likely to throw things off for days to come.

It is reasons like this that when one makes a commitment to posting to a website, or doing anything for that matter, daily, it is important to do all that one can to be prepared for such times. It is reasons like this that having posts written a few days in advance matters. Because, hey, guess what? I likely wont have time to get anything else done today. Possibly tomorrow either.

Yet, that is OK because, thanks to planning, I don't have to break the chain or choose between some life emergency or my blog (the blog will always lose). The best way to pay attention to what really matters when they matter most is to have a plan for how you are going to manage and reduce the attention given to the things that matter less.

I’m a writer. Writing is how I make this world better, friendlier, stronger place. If these words improved your day, please let me know by contributing here.