Today is my 5th day of Freedom since my class ended. The last 2+ months made for one long haul; pretty much every minute of free time was zapped by course work, with every other minute zapped by guilt when I wasn't doing course work. A vicious cycle, indeed, which ended Saturday morning at 9am when I dropped all my course materials in the mail and began...the Rest of My Life.
So far the Rest of My Life has been going ok. It started with that fortuitous vacuum cleaner sighting, and continued with a walk in Central Park. I hadn't slept at all the night before, but the day was too sunny and too Spring-y to stay home napping. While traipsing around the Reservoir, enjoying the newly-flowering trees and counting the number of turtles I passed (22!), I came up with the brilliant and hilarious plan to compile a portfolio of pictures of animal butts. (PS-If you don't agree that this idea is both brilliant and hilarious, then you probably aren't sleep-deprived.)
Please enjoy this sampling of my work, a photo I call "Double-Geese-Butt Shot":
The rest of Saturday and Sunday passed in a blur of productive cleaning and napping and recovery. I tested out my new M.O. of asking "What do you want to do right now?" instead of "What do you have to do?" It felt pretty good. Life felt pretty good, really - more interesting and hope-full than it has in a while. I took deep breaths. I took long walks. I stretched.Sunday night my friend BANaNAs rolled into town for a couple of days, and we celebrated the Rest of My Life by eating good food & good pastries, and talkin' 'bout life, careers, Scandinavia, and of course, Kurt Browning. Leaving work Monday evening for a stroll up Madison Ave. with a friend, instead of rushing off to a coffee shop to spend quality time with my text books, felt great! More deep breaths.
Today, however, I fear the sheen of this newfound freedom is dulling slightly. I don't quite know what to do with myself, with my free time, and with The Rest of My life (ah, the $million$ question). Do I read this book, or that book? Job search? Watch a movie? Go to bed at 8pm every night? Take up oil painting and macrame and sign up for a tango class?
Now, what I really need to do, what my head & heart really need me to do, is a whole bunch of soul-searching, prayerful self-reflection. I'm not so good at reflection. It doesn't fit neatly on a To-Do list, because reflection often involves sitting quietly somewhere, not doing anything, ostensibly.
Nonetheless, there's no way around it. So stay tuned for more on what I've learned over the past few months, reflections on my future, and of course my ongoing struggle with time-management (now that sounds like gripping reading, doesn't it, people!?
1 comment:
I briefly subscribed to PRAY! magazine (I didn't quit b/c it was a poor item, mostly because after having 12 issues on prayer it seemed like enough), and one of the issues was all about personal retreats and how to have one in one day etc. It made for very good reading, and inspired one to have one of those whole day quiet times. So while I don't really do it and I am terrible at even short quiet times, I wouldn't write it off completely as something that would refresh you.
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