… and I have also another big problem in my life… my problem? I am a writer. Oh! Dear! Can you imagine that I am surrounded by a population of mexican jumping beans for whom, if you sit more than 5 minutes — and in front of a computer on the top of it, you’re a lazy ass, suspected of playing games all day long, asked if you don’t have anything more important to do in life or nastily told to get a “real” job? Not really valorizing and uplifting! Really hard to work in this kind of surrounding. Constant fights and arguments and lost of precious time and more upsetting, the lost of an idea or a string of thought or an important point for the book… and the rising of an unconfortable “shadow of guilt” where you ask yourself… “what if they were true”… shivering thought that is shaken out as fast as possible but… the guilt and the doubt had already scratched your heart.

Writing for me (and for many, many, many writers) is soooo important and vital that I can’t just say forget about it… so I might have to clear house and go live alone… at least for a while… to binge on writing and to live for myself and get few moments of happiness.

Hope I will be lucky this month 🙂

Beautiful comment. And I don’t mock cats…I am SERIOUSLY jealous :D.

Even machines need down-time. Even mechanical things need to stop doing their intended purpose and cool down. Machines that function non-stop break sooner.

We like to mock cats for their laziness, but do we stop to think about what they are actually doing? Cats are capable of amazing feats of strength: running, jumping, climbing, hauling down prey that’s moving and masses as much or more than the cat. Cats store their energy so they can use it in bursts. They don’t chase their tails for the heck of it. Granted, house pets are their own breed, but I hope the point comes across.

How many movies or TV shows have we seen in which the protag takes a deep breath, time seems to stop, and s/he suddenly moves and completes the previously impossible action?

Rest takes practice and deliberate effort. It’s a reservoir that we must purposely fill up every chance we get. Nothing’s worse than needing something, not having it, and not being able to get it in time. Rest/peace are not the absence of conflict; they happen in the middle of conflict. When the kids are crying, the stack of bill falling over, the spouse griping about the horrible Job, the in-laws complaining, and the world crashes down, rest in what’s in the middle of that. It’s what lets us pick up the most important task, complete it, and move to the next without falling apart.

If we want to be better at meeting deadlines, we’ve got to be rested when we hit the final backstretch. Want that extra burst of productivity? Dip into your personal savings account. This, my fellow WANAs, is proactivity: storing up rest for that rainy day. Let’s not be caught without it.

(this mini-sermon brought to you by someone who needed to hear it herself.)

Running a business, we are just overwhelmed with e-mail so they were easy to lose. Also helps for tax deduction purposes.