People often say that it's essential to have a to-do system of some sort. If you don't, you're bound to remember that letter you have to mail from the office when you're at home in bed. Or remember that you need to take out the bedroom garbage when you're at work. With a to-do system, you can relax with those things, knowing they're covered & written down somewhere. You can stay present rather than obsess on them.
All of which is to say that the mind has a way of picking the least opportune moments to go down certain pathways. Today I was present in my meditation for periods of time, but I also got carried off by creative ideas for my musical. Good creative ideas. Creative ideas I was sort of unhappy to let go of and come back to the present. Creative ideas I wanted to get up and write down so I wouldn't forget.
I guess the trade off with meditation is that I am training my mind to remain present to whatever it is doing. So that when it is time to be creative, I will stay in that zone, instead of thinking about hot fudge sundaes or erotic photographs.
And for the record, the best creative idea my mind got distracted by was putting a song called "Day Job" back into the show with an earlier edition of the lyrics, and having the dancers do polyrhythmic percussive choreo that's somewhere halfway between "Stomp" and Tom Waits' pipe-clanging hijinks on "Sixteen Shells". I didn't forget.
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