maybe not nothing

Today was a good day.  I slept in a bit, treated myself to an hour and half at a local spa, came home and cooked myself an extravagant lunch, watched a few episodes of Gilmore Girls, spent some more time cooking, and listened to great music.  It was good.  Quiet.  Nice.  Uneventful.

And exactly what I needed.

For most of my life, I’ve been an incredibly driven person.  Sitting around doing “nothing” can be really difficult for me, especially when I know there are things to be done.  (We’re not even going to talk about how early I’m going to get up to start working tomorrow.  We’re just not.)  But I’ve learned a few things over these past awful months, and one of the things I’ve learned is to pay attention to what’s going on internally, and to recognize when working harder is the worst idea possible.

I noticed it in my voice a week or two ago, talking to a friend about what’s next for my business.  There are so many things that could be the next right step for me – so many… And I heard myself telling the truth: “I find myself easily overwhelmed lately.  This conversation is too much right now.”

I’ll admit it – I feel the slightest bit guilty about that.  I know that I have the capability to get out there and learn what I need to learn to grow my business and do all the things that other people think I should to do to become “successful.”  I know it, and I sometimes feel frustrated that I can’t seem to fight my way through that sense of “overwhelm” to make it happen.  And yet…

And yet.  The “overwhelm” is real, and it’s a by-product of a lot of things being really hard for a really long time, and as much as I wish I could write it off as “all in my head” – it isn’t illegitimate.  It’s just there.  It would seem that mourning has a timeline of its own, and that healing is still coming.

I didn’t realize that my amazing day of doing nothing wasn’t actually doing nothing until I sat down to write about it, while listening to this song:

It turns out that today was actually an instinctive way to say Kaddish – to take a proactive step that will help turn my mourning into dancing.  Taking a day to just be, and to care for myself – led me to the end of a long but good day with a grateful heart and a new perspective.

It felt strange, planning a day like this on a Sunday that didn’t include going to church.  But God has been present in this day, anyway – and I’m so grateful.

photo credit: ©Depositphotos.com / ijdema