When you wake up at 5:30 am and can’t get back to sleep, so you get up and play iPad games, and read, and stare out the window at the brightening day and the honeysuckles twining their way up and around the trellis, it seems like a waste not to get moving and get things done. It’s my last day of sick leave/vacation, and I have pretty much laid waste to my entire summer to-do list and then some, over the past 3 weeks, so there wasn’t much ON my list for today. I’ve even spent time organizing and cleaning up a lot of digital stuff, in addition to having the cleanest house EVER.
At 7 am I jumped in the shower, and then I started laundry, cleaned toilets, cleaned up some stuff in the computer room, and wrote up the grocery list. I ate breakfast at 8, and Anders was moving by then, so when I was done I stripped the bed, did some quick vacuuming, and then I ran to the grocery store (and took the cans/bottles with me to the recycling) and picked up a package. I was back home just after 10, and made a big batch of my favorite summer pasta (added asparagus this time!), and now I really have nothing left to do except finish the laundry. I ate lunch at 12 and put the last (third) load in. SO ACCOMPLISHED! GO ME!
It’s another scorcher of a day, 30C (86F) and it’s TOO HOT for me. It was the same yesterday, it’s been a little heat dome sitting over us for the weekend. The temps will go down to a more reasonable level this coming week, but I’ll be back at work and in the office, so it will be up to Anders to keep the house cool as he’ll be working from home. If I’m not directly under the ceiling fans right now (which I’m not while I’m writing this), I am sweating and Barky is having a field day. đŸ˜€
I read this interesting article yesterday about how the brain perceives time and why we feel like everything speeds up as we age. It was fascinating, and while I’ve read about this phenomenon before, and generally knew about it, what struck me was the author’s acknowledgement of how so many people are so nostalgic for their childhood that they wish they could recreate or go back to it. And that they felt it was BETTER because everything was new and time seemed to pass in a slower, fuller way.
I’ll just state for the record that I have NEVER felt that way. I have no desire to recreate or regress to or return in any way to my childhood. I understand that it’s a little scary to feel that time has sped up and things zoom along and blur and time shoves us past and through and into an increasingly diminishing future, but as this author says, and which I fully embrace, we have the power to change our perception. If we feel that time is moving too fast, it’s not that hard to learn the habit of slowing it down deliberately by NOTICING what is going on around us. We can put our phone down and stop scrolling, we can literally MOVE OUR EYES AROUND AND OUR HEAD AROUND AND OURSELVES AROUND to take in more carefully what we are doing, what is happening around us, and take note.
Every day as it progresses, when something good or fun or funny happens, I write it down in my notes app on my phone so that at the end of the day I have my daily good things list ready to go. If I didn’t do this, I’d forget half of what has happened (and still sometimes do). I find that deliberately stopping to make note, or training myself to remember something to write down as soon as I have the chance (often by repeating it over and over several times), helps me feel like the day is fuller, and I am more aware of both myself and my surroundings, as well as the things that are happening to and around me. They don’t have to be big, dramatic, important things. Just noticing the beauty of the clouds as I drive up the hill to work, or how good my lunch is, or something helpful that someone did for me, is enough to make the day feel richer and more purposeful. And I don’t think it would really matter if I wrote these things down or kept a daily good things list at all…it’s the ACT of noticing, of paying attention, that’s important.
And in addition to not having any desire to return to childhood, I don’t really have any desire to return to my youth either…although my youthful BODY would be nice, and I suspect that is what many people are actually nostalgic for. Our elastic skin, our excellent metabolism, the health and vigor that we take for granted when we are young…THAT I miss. Perhaps our curiosity, or the feeling that everything is new and possible that we have when we are young, or the way we were able to prioritize ourselves over jobs/family/homes/responsibilities. But my mind, that is, the inside of me, the ME of me…it’s the same. Of course I have learned and experienced many, many things that I wouldn’t want to lose but the ME that is writing this is the same ME that was writing back when I was in my 20s and 30s and 40s (and gulp, 50s). It’s weird to think that your body ages, while your brain ages but doesn’t undergo cell replacement in any meaningful way. It stands to reason that I AM the same ME that I always have been, on the inside, in my head.
Just now my ME is me with a really, really clean and organized house, and the satisfaction of knowing that I am ready to go back to work and “real” life after 3 weeks of serious recharging, relaxing, recreation, and rearranging.
Mood: happy
Music: Blue Merle—Burning in the Sun