Do it. Now.

It’s been a busy day. I’ve done NEARLY all my daily tasks (posting this blog is one more off the list), but one I haven’t yet done is my 5 minutes’ keyboard practice. And now there’s a problem: the whole of Bramley has been plunged into darkness by a power cut. Luckily my friend Sarah cooked me dinner after the gym tonight and advised me to go for my run while the salmon cooked, so the lack of power for the treadmill isn’t an issue (the streetlights are out too).

I am planning to practise silent scales and go through fingering for a new piece, but even I, whose glass is perpetually half full, can’t pretend that playing the keyboard with no actual sound is anything other than suboptimal. I wish I’d done it sooner, on one of the 15 or so occasions today when I’d thought, ‘Should do my keyboard practice now…’ then got distracted by something else. We always think there’ll be time. We put things off until the last possible minute. And sometimes, the last possible minute comes and goes and we only realise we missed it when it’s too late. So I’m sitting here wearing a head torch and hot-spotting off my mobile phone: the blog will get posted (and the streak continues, 236 days now). But the keyboard practice will be silent and sad. It didn’t cross my mind we might not have power tonight.

What are you taking for granted?