I’m still blank… and not as freshly fallen snow.
More like that black crap left at the end of the season.
Grimy, grainy, used.
Okay, that’s only half of me.
The grainy grimy gripey side of me. The whiner. (Left or right hand side of my body, hmm… not sure.)
The other side of me, that’s the I Want To Create Side.
This side is busting out with ideas and can’t wait to work. I want to do a Simple Comforting Action product from all the good stuff we did at the Comfort Cafe, I want to restart my novel, I want to start a new non-fiction book about what I learned in hard times, I want to plan my 2010 retreats, I want to start working on the Big 2010 Virtual Retreat… I want to sing, I want to dance, I want to cook like Julia Child!
But first, I need more rest.
I’m like a wound up child. “But Mommy, I’m not tired.”
And like a good mom, I don’t say, “Oh yes you are. Now go to bed.” Instead, I’ve let myself flay about the studio today – which is still torn apart but the sky blue-ocean blue floor is done and waiting for a sealant! – and make lists and feel despairing and take a grouchy grudging nap…
There are just times when you have to prove to yourself how tired you are.
Then you can truly let go and rest.
What does it take for you to rest? What is rest for you? Hey, that would make a great next blog post.
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9 responses so far ↓
1 Hiro Boga Aug 10, 2009
Jen, hugs for your sweetly tired, grouchy, needing-rest self. May there be as many healing naps as you need to feel happily creative again.
For me, rest is often a nap, sometimes just lying down quietly with a book. Mostly, I feel truly rested when I give myself a long enough stretch of time that isn’t bound by agendas, obligations, responsibilities. When I can stay in my pajamas all day if I want to. Eat breakfast for lunch if I choose. Sit on the deck and do absolutely nothing except take in the day, if that’s what I want to do.
Rest is simple, untrammeled freedom to be.
I wish that for you too.
Love, Hiro
2 Leah Aug 10, 2009
Oh, I can relate!! I totally need one of those grouchy grudging naps. (great name for that, by the way.)
3 Sarah Bray Aug 10, 2009
Man, you’ve hit it today. I think it’s when I collapse on the bed crying for “no reason”. (Sure, there’s no reason.)
I love my job so much that I hate to stop. Even when I’m determined to rest, I never rest for long enough. And I don’t want to be resting, so I’m not sure it’s doing me any good. Eeps!
Thanks for the gentle push.
4 Irene Aug 11, 2009
Rest is spending time with your little kid self. The part who wants to try something new, like making a dress, or a finger painting.
Rest involves listening to music that brings you pleasure, or listening to the sound of the sea or the wind.
Rest means pushing the pause button. Time stands still just for you. You own your own time. You feel the presence of your own body and soul.
Rest means connecting with God, all that is, the higher tuning of your existence.
Rest means feeling whole again.
With all my love and good wishes.
5 Elizabeth Harper Aug 11, 2009
Sometimes…it takes a migraine for me to rest…a point where my body revolts with a sudden ice-pick in my eye kind of pain and the unspoken threat that would sound like this, ” If you won’t take a break then I’ll make you…now lie down and don’t get up until I say you can..” if pain had a voice.
6 Aivlis Aug 11, 2009
Rest means resting fully and wholly in myself. I ususally try to get round spending this close a time with myself, as it totally freaks me out to be this connected.
I’m with my family at the moment, all the women who raised me in one house together, and I can so totally see where all this huge evading pattern is coming from…
I cannot plan to rest. But sometimes, there is days or an hour or two that I spend totally contrary to how I’ve planned to spend them – and this is when I fully grasp and smile and cherish, that there is a guidance in myself that will forever bring me back to myself when I least suspect it and take “precautions”…I’m loving it and I’m grateful for these times to occur and lovingly notice my growing receptivity to their arrival…
7 Bridget Aug 11, 2009
I find that it helps to rest in “layers”, little acts of different kinds of resting to get me to a point of real relaxation.
So I take a nice bath. I rub my feet. I stretch. I sit outside. And then I sleep. It lets my active mind slowly change from “Going” to “Not so much”.
8 Char Brooks Aug 11, 2009
Hey Jen:
Just sending you love and whatever rest looks like for you that feels just right!
Like Hiro said, sometimes rest for me is not “sleeping or napping” per se – it is just_____________- fill in the blank at the moment and see.
Hugs to you always and throughout your day.
9 Loi Aug 11, 2009
Rest is when I can sit around doing what I enjoy without any worries or regrets whatsoever. In other words, something I get very little of.
In order for me to rest, I have to eat well, finish all my tasks, (usually including exercise) have no worries for the next day, and be able to do what I want without remembering anything unsettling.
Actually, I’m glad I read this (even though I should be doing something else). I should think more like this- How can I get more rest?
Thanks.