The Washing Machine, the Sunny Saturday, and the Art of Enough

It was a Saturday. A beautiful, sunny Saturday, and my husband was away on a trip. I woke up feeling genuinely good - light, optimistic, and for the first time in days, without the back pain that had been quietly following me around. That kind of morning feels like a gift.

I made my coffee and did what I always do when I feel that particular combination of energy and possibility. I took a piece of paper and I wrote a list. Clean the kitchen, the floor, the windows. The master bedroom. The bathroom. Take care of the flowers on the outside windowsill. Gardening - at least one garden bed. Wash the muddy shoes my son had brought in the day before. Three loads of laundry. And then, in another corner of the page, the work things: send the retreat email, publish a blog post, send the Grimalda Sessions newsletter, decide on the next topic, create the visual, update the web shop text.

I looked at my list and thought - if I get most of this done, that is great. And if I manage something extra, even better. It smelled like a good day.

You know how this story ends.

The washing machine finished its cycle and didn't drain. The water just sat there. I tried draining program again. Several times. I tried another program, just to check. Then draining again. I asked for help online, got a few possible causes, and began working through them one by one - which meant running cycle after cycle, waiting, checking, trying again. What I thought would take minutes took hours. The sun moved across the sky without me. The garden bed waited. The shoes stayed muddy a little longer.

Eventually, I fixed it. But the Saturday I had imagined in my head - that light, productive, sun-filled day - was not quite the Saturday I lived.

And this is what I keep thinking about.

Joe Dispenza once asked in a documentary: have you ever wondered what your thoughts are made of? It stayed with me for 15 years after I first heard it. Because when an idea comes to us - when we see it fully formed in our mind - it feels weightless. Made of nothing, not even thin air. Pure possibility, pure potential. Easy to access. Just need to do a few things, and it is done.

And then there is the material world. Dense. Resistant. Full of washing machines that don't drain and unexpected hours and plans that quietly rearrange themselves without asking permission.

You not making it happen as you imagined is not a failure of vision. This is simply the nature of bringing anything from the invisible into the visible. The gap between the idea and the reality is not a sign that something is wrong. It is the work itself. It is a space of tapping in the dark, trying and falling, being tempted, wanting the wrong things, overestimating your capacity, underestimating your abilities, not knowing what you do but moving forward, falling up and getting up to your feet again. That is where the most important work happens.

The actual work  is not creating the piece - it is being with yourself while the process unravels itself.

Be easy on yourself

We dream big - and we should. We make our lists - and we should. We go toward things with high expectations because high expectations come from high standards, and there is nothing wrong with that. But somewhere in the middle of the doing, it helps to remember that we are human. That we are working in a world that is dense and unpredictable and occasionally full of broken appliances on sunny days.

You are doing the work. You are truly showing up - for your home, your family, your business, your dreams. All of it at once, most of the time. That is not a small thing.

So go for it. Dream big. Take action. Walk the path.

And then, at the end of the day, slow down just enough to say: I did what I could today. I did enough. I did well.

We'll see what tomorrow brings.

Marina