Yesterday I had another nothing day. I went out to an appointment and had the car loaded with books I intended to read and take notes from. I had a list of what I call the “this and that” of life in my head. Small things left undone end up like an assembly line at a factory just filling up until it ceases to move. When there are enough items that only take a few minutes, then I tackle them all on the same day. So I had that intention.

I returned home, sat down and could immediately feel the last two nights of short periods of sleep in my body.

Somewhere in between seasons hung outside. It wasn’t raining. It wasn’t snowing. The sun wasn’t shining. The air was a dripping dull gray. My mind kept circling back to, “I can start now.” But I was hungry so time for late breakfast at 1 pm.

maple leaves sudden shift to autumn

After reclining on the couch watching crap TV for a while, my mind started its tick tick the list again but I couldn’t work up enough enthusiasm to even check in and see what mind was putting on a list. It was like some background furnace noise blowing through my head space.

I read a bit of my book, I fell asleep for a while, I spent two hours on Facebook, I took the nail polish off of my left thumb then lost my focus. Thank God I had to pee because that got me up to clean the bathroom since I was already there and couldn’t be bothered to sit down and then get up AGAIN to clean. Walking past the washer, I started a single load before I sank back into the warm, worn flesh of the leather couch.

Thinking about marketing, my web presence, my web site, how I needed to “feed the blog” this week, make a poetry video, clean up some poems for the reading Saturday night. Oh! Now the things that I was not doing were becoming more clarified. The shapes through the mind fog were starting to sharpen into discernible entities.

My body was sore from working out every day for five days. So I fell upon the default rescue thought. If I am building muscle then not doing anything is what my body needs in order to repair. So while I am thinking I am not taking action, by not taking action I am allowing my body to take action.

intense colors signal an ending

But I wasn’t buying it. My internal dialogue was continuing the argument. The only thing you are successfully doing is converting time off into yet another item on your list. So you are trying to be working toward your goals even when you are not. Impressive.

At this point, I was exhausted by not doing anything at all with my day so I went upstairs to bed to read a motivational book about focus, commitment to goals and daily effort. Yes. You heard me. Even as I was rolling over in the down covers to take a nap, my mind was saying, “Good job. You are motivation yourself.”

If there were a gold medal for cognitive dissonance, I am in contention for it. Because I am always in contention with myself. I was even too blecky to sit meditation. The last thought before my second nap was, “Well this is some kind of meditation, isn’t it?”

So today I feel that I can get so much done because I rested yesterday. I have a list in hand. The “this and that” items such as buying a tiny bulb for a dark lamp are all written out on the notebook page. I have inventoried my web presences which I intend to realign to one another, reconstruct my marketing plan.

veins like river beds on the earth surface of the leaf

Are these days of no action easy for me? No. The guilt and the internal nattering are not relaxing at all. But I say to myself as if I were a space traveller that it is what the other earthlings do. It doesn’t seem to set them back that much. And after all, I can cross “rest up” off of my list now.

Better get out and rake those leaves.