They call them rest days, but they aren’t always so restful, as Michael discovers when he takes a day off running and tries to write.
Rest day. No running. Well, no running unless I can’t stand it. I’ve got a migraine. Bad juju, I think. Too much thinking, not enough acting, too little clarity, too little, too often. “…Too much of nothin’ makes a fellow mean…”( “The Mighty Quinn” according to Bob Dylan).
On the other hand, it is what I have made of it — the running, the writing, the shooting, and like that. So it must be in my own hands to at least do the work…seat of the pants in the seat of the chair, quit yer whinin’ and write something, anything. In an hour or two you can go chop some wood, literally, and then you can rearrange the weights, move the bench, do the laundry, sell something to someone, anyone, eat lunch a spoonful of complex carbs at a time, vacuum the living room, edit the last post, drift across the universe in a Facebook space module, quit whinin’, send out the rent check (late), hang the microfiber, dry the other stuff, gaze out the window, gaze at my own navel, shift the fleet up the coast (as if), write some more. Nap.
The road leads somewhere, even when I can’t see for looking. Keeping the faith, lifting my eyes to whatever I believe in, taking my medicine, literally and otherwise, and keeping it tight. A rest day? Not so much.
Photo Credit
“Alley in black and white” © Michael Lebowitz. All Rights Reserved.
That thinking can certainly get in the way of rest and clarity. When chopping wood we long to be resting, when resting we long to be…