JOY ALONG THE WAY: MAKE YOUR OWN 100 DAY CONTRACT

I am five days into my 100-day contract with myself. It will, running concurrently with another 100-day contract, end April 13th. So far, all is going well. The basement has been swept and hot water hosed, the inside of the windows Windexed.

I reduced the budget for this by doing the work myself. I pay myself a smoke-and-mirrors hourly wage of $25. It took 2 hours. That was $50 less $5.79 for a tube of Ben-Gay and loss of two hours work the next day on account of muscular recalcitrantitis. Read-out on my smoke-and-mirrors computer: Gains $50, Losses $55.79. But it is worth $5.79 to open the basement door and see a clean floor below. And I'll make up the loss by doing without chocolate for four weeks, and in the doing without, achieve another goal -- reducing the cholesterol two points (my smoke-and-mirrors number). It all gets mathematically and physically intertwined.

What shall I do? Call in Greenspan? Panetta? I'd be put on hold for hours, maybe days. It would be telephonic expensive, however much I'd enjoy listening to "Stars and Stripes Forever," "America" and "The Star-Spangled Banner." Better to just follow the recipe in that other 100-day contract. Downsize!

So far, I've cut my voodoo hourly wage by half, $12.50. Then, if I lose a couple of hours work, $25, on account of muscle stubbornness, and a variety of other itises, I won't have to work so much overtime for free. By the middle of February I imagine I'll be working for myself for free all the time. So much for my enhanced feeling of paid workability.

I love round numbers. I mean round numbers as in 0. So I have two of them in my contract and it is in blocks of 100s.

1. Dispose of 100 useless things and do not replace with 100 useless things.

2. Walk 100 miles. That means a mile a day! 20 minutes round and round in my basement will do it and while I'm walking I'll make note of 100 different things I can do without.

3. Watch 100 sunrises and 100 sunsets. There is a 50-50 chance I can't complete this in the allotted time on account of cloudy days. But this is the season of my two sunsets per day! I take my familiar seat at the kitchen table and watch the sun go down in its rich-colored winter glory behind the northwest corner of Chateau Girardeau. Three minutes later it emerges from the lower point of that corner to seemingly rest on the wooded horizon and then set again in even more red-gold colors.

4. Send 100 letters or greeting cards to friends and family, telling how much they have enriched my life. You think I haven't 100? Well, I can always slip in a little greeting with my bills. That will bridge any gap and astound Union Electric, Electric, TCI, Southwestern Bell, Blue Cross, City of Cape Girardeau, etc, etc.

5. Fill the bird feeder 100 times.

6. Read 100 newspapers.

7. Omit 100 pushups!

8. Eat 100 apples

9, Delete 100 hours of wasted time getting ready to start miscellaneous endeavors, chores, ought-to-dos. Just do it.

10. Write 100 words a day such as: Let me walk softly on the earth, leaving no scars in my passage, erecting no false signposts, yet placing little word notices along the way. Where new shoots come up around an old stump, my sign would say, "See this." When meadowlarks ring out their joyous cheer, I would erect, "Stop. Hear this." When sap drips from a broken maple limb, "Taste this." Where lilacs spill their perfume, "Smell this." When the milkweed opens its silky pod, the rabbit builds its fuzz-lined nest, the rose opens its petals, "Touch this and this and this and this."

REJOICE!

~Jean Bell Mosley is an author and longtime columnist with the Southeast Missourian.