Day 2: Ready for a Rest?
Before every rest, there’s a paint explosion. At least for me. This one was kicked off by my dog pooping on the floor.
Picture it: I’m in a Zoom meeting. Actually, I’m teaching over Zoom in my writing room because it’s the one place with a door that’s not a bedroom or bathroom in a house full of boy children during quarantine. If I don’t let our dog, JB, in she’ll whimper on the other side of the door. I let her in. Then, she poops on my writing room floor in the middle of class.
I’m a pro. I finish teaching with a poker face, which I wish came with a poker nose. After class is done, I clean it up, and I notice all other sorts of gross. The painted cement floor is covered in grime, a mix of tracked-in yuck and candle soot. The soot is also on the white walls, and many of the pictures I hung a few years back are askew, the sticky tack having lost its stickiness (or would that be its tackiness) awhile back?
I’d run out of surfaces, too. Jesse had taken over my desk for homeschool, so I moved operations to the circular table and piled the books and journals from there in a corner on the floor. In the other corner was a box of Lu books that I kept meaning to put in the closet (once I cleaned out the closet). The third corner held a stack of mishmash – teaching notes from a class I taught in January, tumblers I was supposed to have given people, and a folder of receipts needing filing. In the last corner leaned a yoga mat from a time when I used to practice breathing while stretching my hammies.
My writing room – the space I’d claimed and restored three years ago after publishing Lu – was now a heap of non-decision, disorganization, too many people, candle pollution (and dog poop).
“Everything out!” I declared, and I enlisted the boys to help move stuff from one room to another, which was sort of like pushing dirt around, but I needed a handle on what I was dealing with before I could pare down and reorganize. With the room cleared, I could see the candle grime was everywhere, and I filled a bucket with soapy water. Five minutes in, I realized this was really pushing dirt around.
So, I decided to paint over it instead, a maneuver that seemed heady at this point in the day, but quite normal to Matt when he came home to the chaos of one piled-up room and three boys in front of screens so Mom can paint RIGHT NOW!
“You tend to do this between one thing and another,” he observed.
Oh.
Over the next few weeks, we’re talking about rest – what it is and where it can take us if we’d only give over to it. Before we get too far in, it’s important to know our own tells for when we need a break. As I shared in the in the last blog, mine begins with a left-eye twitch and moves to a need to paint something, apparently.
As we move from spring to summer, what unconscious or even semi-conscious actions are telling you it’s time to:
Clear outChange courseHang upSay, “No”NapPlayLet goStop
The sooner I catch these signals, the more rest feels like a bold decision versus a last-ditch resort. Tomorrow, we’ll do a little brainstorm to help you clear your life out, but today, let’s stay here in my freshly painted writing room. I’d love for you to share in the comments – What in your life is telling you it’s time to rest?
We’re talking rest right now on the blog – what it is, why we need it, and how we get it. If you just jumped in, go to Post 1 to catch up. Sign up for the blogs to go straight to your Inbox so you don’t miss any!
