Second hands tick,
the incessant sound of time passing
yet, time seems to stand still.
What feels like a year,
is simply a collection of days,
falling into a pattern of weeks.
The metronome of life
chimes steadily in my head,
gently reminding me
how slowly time can pass.
But time marches on
and, even though it feels like an eternity,
the perpetual movement of time
always pushes forward.
~~
Most days our time is spent on routine tasks. We get up, we have coffee, we prepare ourselves (and possibly a family) for the approaching day and we leave the house, or not, with confidence as we anticipate the next eight to twelve hours of our lives. It seems like a standard operating procedure.
But life has a way of throwing a myriad number of curve balls into our otherwise predictable strike zone. It can be exhausting trying to anticipate what is coming next. By 3:00 pm, the wall looms directly ahead and we plow right into it.
There is much to be said for getting to the point in your life that admitting an afternoon nap is acceptable. It doesn’t make us old, it makes us smart. If you can afford yourself a bit of a break, a 2o-minute power snooze has been proven to boost your energy level, your cognitive skills, your creativity and your memory.
So the next time your boss catches you catching some z’s at your desk, you can simply tell that executive figure that you are clearly increasing your productivity in the workplace.
How do you feel about an afternoon siesta?
My dad was a staunch believer in always giving 100 percent effort. His mantra played over and over in my head every time I wrote a test in school and every time I had to put any form of exertion into a task.
Somewhere along my journey through this life, that chant of success began to increase in volume and unwittingly seeped into every other aspect of my life. Sometimes it felt good and other times it felt more like punishment.
I began to take most things to a new level. And going overboard on simple achievements was just the beginning. Realizing I couldn’t attain perfection led me into a pattern of over-eating.
When the over-eating became much more noticeable, I began to over-analyze and over-think everything about the problem instead of just recognizing it for what it was and dealing with it head on.
Of all the things I do with the utmost intensity, over-thinking is the worst of them. I cannot seem to let what will be just be. My brain configures numerous scenarios, all with different outcomes, and will not stop when it should be satisfied. There is always another possibility. This is a fantastic gift to have when I am writing fiction but, when it comes to creating plot lines based on my reality, it is a detriment to normal productivity.
I expend a great effort each day to quell those thoughts. I could take an issue so benign and have it twisted into something so distorted from its original form that it becomes a gnarled version of what it once was and something so far removed from what it ever should be. If I could ever transfer these thoughts to pages of a novel, it would be quite the story.
For now, I will wait out the current situation that has me over-thinking. I will listen to those little voices as they churn out ending after ending but when I reach the point that I eventually find out what will really happen, the wait will be over.
sky of mottled grey
snow flakes flying through the air
wind that hurts my face
I used to be a very patient person. I was never fidgety while waiting in a line. I knew my turn would come eventually and I was okay with that.
As the years have passed, I now understand where my mother was coming from when she used to say “my patience is wearing thin”. Perhaps it is somehow a right of passage that we are less apt to wait today than we may have been a couple of decades ago. My patience these days resembles something like the onion-skin paper we used to trace pictures when we were in high school.
There are still moments when I am okay to wait, moments that are fleeting and that I know will pass relatively quickly. But I am currently caught in a circumstance where I feel completely helpless and have no choice but to sit back and wait for information to come to me. I feel horribly powerless and that is not a feeling I am accustomed to experiencing.
It’s hard to let go. It’s difficult to convince myself that things are going well at the other end when my imagination continues to conjure hundreds of possible scenarios. And my lack of patience only fuels the fire of anxiety as I am forced to bide my time until I get some news.
Until then, I shall consume myself with projects to try to keep myself busy enough so I can quell the even more impatient creative writers in my head. My own restlessness is hard enough to deal with….they will make this waiting period intolerable.
I have said this before and I’m sure I’ll say it many times again before they pry my cold, dead fingers from my laptop – I love to cook. I find great pleasure in mixing flavors and trying new things (sans recipe – my dad would be proud). Some of those things work and some don’t. And since I referred to my dad, I will tell you that although he was a fabulous “do it yourself” cook, some recipes just didn’t have the desired effect once on the plate. For those of you who have ever entertained the idea of scrambled eggs made with eggnog – Don’t Do It!!
I have worked in many restaurants from breakfast diners to fine dining restaurants and I had the foresight to pay attention to how each Chef took the time with their presentation. From swirls of Balsamic Reduction to the height they could achieve on a plate, every little nuance, every detail on that plate, made that dish even more special by enhancing the flavor. It was food for the eyes as well as the palette. The term “Amuse Bouche” delighted me. When a single, delectable morsel became the new trend at the beginning of a meal, I was taken with its modesty in size but explosion of flavor.
I do my best to amuse my bouche every time I create my feasts, whether it is for company or simply for myself. But sometimes, on those rare nights you just want to curl up under a blanket with an intriguing book, there is nothing better than a good breakfast for dinner. Those recognizable morning food items are the epitome of comfort food. Sizzling homemade pork sausage patties and the perfect fried egg were the perfect end to my day, especially since the eggs were nestled in a bed of potato pancakes. Simple, delicious and just what the bookworm in me required for the perfect night. My bouche is amused and it is time to find out who Darwin really is!!
My last post seemed to send an abundant amount of energy into the ethers. I awoke with a very sore throat and headache the morning following the post about Newton’s laws and found my health steadily declining throughout the morning. My energy was sapped, I was, in fact, lethargic, and my legs felt like lead as they slowly carried me to my car after I was told to go home and have a nap.
I crawled into bed at just before 2:00 pm with an alarm set to call in to work to let them know how I was. My physical situation at 4:30 pm was no better so I was told to stay home and rest. I don’t think any of us had a clue what that really meant. My exhaustion was so far advanced that I actually slept for 24 hours!
Newton was correct in his theory that an object at rest tends to remain at rest. There were a few times I became partially conscious, only to realize my dog was three inches from my face. She was undoubtedly checking to see if I was still breathing and, once she ascertained my level of cognizance, asked me to let her out. With a few breaks during that 24-hour period for bathroom trips for myself and my dog, I finally really awoke at 2:40 pm the next day.
Had I known the power of a wish in the Blogosphere could be granted so quickly, I may have rethought my wish for a lottery win instead of a 24-hour mini-coma. At least I feel much more rested….and there is always a wish for the next lottery draw if anyone up there is still listening!!
I felt it.
Like the prickling of goosebumps,
I sensed the energy was different yesterday.
There were no warnings,
there was no black cloud in the sky,
but the winds of my day shifted
and my boat pitched on the stormy sea of Sunday.
Waves threatened to pull me into the angry water
but I held fast to my rudder
trying to steer myself to the calmness in the distance.
Energy that surrounded me
knocked the hull of my sanctity
sending me further off my course.
When I finally reached the safe shore of my home,
the voyage of my day settled.
The wind no longer pushed me away from myself
and my calm found me again,
settled in for the night
and lulled me back into happiness.
Yesterday was an interesting day. The energy in my work space was charged with an unknown element and the entire day felt like I was living in an alternate universe. People were doing inane things, the simplest conversation turned into a painful thirty minute ordeal and the tension could have been cut by nothing less than a chainsaw. My rhetorical question was to ask, “is it a full moon?” and the response was an embellished “yes”.
Although there is no direct correlation between the phases of the moon and human behavior, the full moon gives human beings a fantastic excuse for acting like idiots. The blame is put solely on the celestial orb, taking the onus from the one acting completely out of character but, when the sky is dark, strange behavior is accepted as exactly that with no other plausible justification.
Many of our references to luck, or the lack thereof, are written in the stars. We wish on a falling star. Our horoscopes are creatively tied to constellations in the sky. And we blame a magical orb of light for any unfavorable happenings during the phase in which it finds its truest beauty.
On those days that society deems the moon to be the cause of all of its woes, the child who still resides in my mind hopes that the fantasy man who inhabits that enchanting sphere is truly giving us the full moon.
I wake up the same way each morning. In the lighter moments of my sleep, when dawn pours its light into my curtain-free windows to caress my eyelids, four paws stealthily creep up to the side of my bed. A long furry nose rests itself on the bed and two large brown stare at me until I crack open one eye to acknowledge her presence. The tail wags and the rest of the body jumps up onto the bed to assume her spot in the window.
She is intelligent enough to know that seeing only one eyeball means there are still snooze buttons to be utilized and she will participate in the morning naps as well. This morning she curled into a ball at the end of the bed and, like a good dog, quickly fell into slumber.
I awoke to the sound of her tail hitting the bed. I opened that single eyelid again, for fear of beginning our morning too early, to find that she was still sound asleep and apparently having a very happy dream. I am a morning person and usually begin my day in a good mood. It’s nice to know my puppy does the same thing.
polysyllabic profundities 