Tonight, I spent forty minutes at my sit spot. For the first twenty minutes, I sat and stared at the moon impatiently, fidgeting to the point that I began to annoy myself. All I wanted to do was experiment with the manual settings of my camera to see if I could digitally capture the moon more clearly.

Like most things, anticipation in moderate amounts is a good thing. Having something positive to look forward to makes us happy, but if the anticipation gets out of control, if it steals all of our attention, it robs us of our ability to enjoy the present. Everybody knows this. Even I know this, yet when I'm caught up in it -- focused only on the future -- I temporarily forget.

This is all to say, I succeeded in sitting outside for twenty minutes without ever paying attention to what was around me. What did I hear, smell, feel? I couldn't say. What did I see? Well, the moon was before my eyes, but all I saw were the shutter speed and aperture settings on my camera's viewfinder. It was twenty minutes lost.

For the next twenty minutes, I gave my attention completely to my camera. My world became a two-inch screen. When I think back, I can still feel the metal body and the sensation of pressing the buttons to make adjustments and take the photos. I can remember the feeling of holding my breath and trying to remain still while the shutter was open, holding the bottom of the gorillapod to keep the wind from knocking the camera over.

Tomorrow night, I'll make a better effort to stay in the now. It's okay to let my attention travel to the past or future, but only as long as it spends some quality time with the present.