Life is a balance between rest and movement

I have never been a napper. It's not that I can't take naps. I can. It's that they are usually 2+ hours and I wake up acting like an ogre, not refreshed and suitable for public consumption. When I talk about being a non-napper, people who love the nap say things like oh you can nap just nap. Yes, I can. But I don't in the way that I avoid listening to Fox News because I don't like to do things that turn me into a raging asshole. 

For most of my life I have not been a rester either unless I set out specifically to rest - i.e. I am on the beach, there's no house work to do or errands to run. I wasn't doing anything because I couldn't do anything. Otherwise I would give myself a huge list of shit to do and not sit down until it was finished or until I ran myself into the ground, whichever came first. 

It's taken most of my life but the past two years I've finally seen the value of taking a rest because how I was doing it was fucking insane. There will always be shit to do even if you do things 24 hours a day. I had to beat that into my brain. 

Rest, though. The value of laying down or sitting still. Of just closing my eyes on the beach. Of passively reading. Of recharging. It's taken me a while to come to it but I love it. 

I still do get the work out of the way first before resting, mostly because I'm not a stop in the middle person but I don't assign as much stuff to most days as I used to so I'm getting to that rest while I am still human and not a zombie from go go go do do do. 

Old habits and thought patterns die hard though. Saturday late afternoon I settled down with a book next to a worn out dog. About 45 minutes in, I was a little restless. Maybe I should get up and put a few things away. Maybe I should go down to the beach. Maybe I should clean the bathroom. I was probably wasting my day. 

No. No. And no. I shouldn't do any of those things and I wasn't wasting my day. 

Not to mention by that time I had already walked probably over five miles total, took care of turnover between rental guests, shopped and lunched with Debbie, been to the library, cleaned up outside, put July Fourth decor up...it's not like I had done nothing, but resting when I could be doing more made me feel like I had been completely unproductive. After doing those things, rest would be a good balance. 

Finding balance is easy. It is important. Maintaining it is not effortless. I hate when I know the right way to be and I still fight myself on it.

File under: things I'm still working on.