All Good Things… Skip Leg Day Sometimes.

#Blog #Bloggerstribe #AllGoodThings…
7th June 2020

Hello, Chaps and Chapettes and welcome to the only Sunday when you’ll find me writing one of these. “What a lazy so and so you are likely to become for doing so, Scaramouche,” I hear you cry. Bear with me and I’ll explain why, on this occasion, it is quite alright to give yourself a regular rest day.

(Photo: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6qw7ns )

Technically, I’m almost writing this on the 8th June, with ten minutes to go before tomorrow, as I woke up late (2 PM!), had a late-night singing karaoke online with friends from the Brony community and spent a lot of my day chilling, catching up with my mum at a social distance, eating a delicious dinner (my flatmate made shakshuka for the first time) and watching Jurassic Park for the first time. Today has been nice. No responsibilities, no work, no worries!

You might think it was a wasted day. I didn’t write anything until now, I did a little bit of hoovering but in the grand scheme of things that’s hardly a task unless you make it particularly difficult. However, I call it one of the most productive days this week, more so than yesterday when I spent three extra hours doing some overtime for my paying career. The reason I feel it was such a good day is that it gave me a chance to rest, to recuperate, and to build some ideas for what I wanted out of the week ahead. It even allowed me to play to write this blog, while I was still going to take a day off from it.

You see, you can tire yourself out no matter what profession, hobby or interest you enjoy. You can be doing stocks, shares, legal work, building models, playing computer games, writing, painting, traveling, physical training, the list is endless and yet they all require periods of rest. If you don’t, you risk burning yourself out or creating a negative atmosphere for the thing. You do not want that as it will cause you to disassociate and move on from it or even give up completely and become depressed.

Think back on the things you’ve done in the past, in childhood, at school, or as an adult at work or at home. Were there any times when you were looking forward to something, only to go to town on it for a few days or a week, month or more, and then find it slowly lost its appeal? That is because you put so much energy into the start of the project that you burnt it out completely, thus making any problems become roadblocks rather than challenges to overcome. Rather than your idea being a steady slope to the top, it is a mountain. You can level it off again, but you need to do one important thing, and it comes full circle to what I said at the start.

(Photo: https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/5-life-lessons-we-learned-from-the-land-before-time )

You need to rest.

The rest will give you many benefits. It will allow you to recharge your batteries, it will let you reinvigorate your passion for the thing you are working on and it will let you come up with new approaches to improving it. The places where most people come up with great ideas and solutions to problems they face are usually when they have to stop and take a moment away. Two particular places are in our bathrooms, well, not solely our bathrooms. You do not have strangers lining up to use your lavatory in order to get a brainwave on the next big invention. However, it has been suggested that many innovators have had their eureka moments in the shower or while sitting on the loo. This is because they have to take themselves away from the forced thinking they were doing at a desk or in an office.

So, if you find yourself flagging, losing the will to do something, or simply getting bored, do yourself a favor. You don’t need to go sit on the toilet if you don’t need it for, ahem, other business, but giving yourself a well-deserved bath can do wonders. Don’t have a bath? A shower can be equally as therapeutic or you can go and meditate if you feel your cleanliness levels are still satisfactory. There’s no secret technique to meditation that must be taught to you by a guru or monk over decades in a monastery, it’s a very simple thing to do.

First, sit down. Somewhere comfortable preferably. Doing that? Good. Now… do nothing. That’s it. It’s that easy. Really! Okay, so there are a few other things you can do, such as take a few deep breaths to regulate your breathing and closing your eyes, but you can meditate with eyes open too. Stare at a wall or let yourself look around if you get stiff but don’t look at anything that will make you worry or feel like you’re not doing anything. Give yourself a time limit so that you know you don’t have to do it forever, otherwise just sit, drift and let your mind ease itself into that comfy chair…

Think of it as training for a boxing match. You could go through a full training montage like Rocky, punch bags, jog up and down the marble stairs of a courthouse, learn how to float like a butterfly, AND sting like a murder hornet or whatever those scary-looking things are. However, you get to the big match, you’re facing your opponent and the bell rings. The crowd is cheering, cameras flashing like a silent lightning storm, you go for your first punch… and it’s lame. Twenty seconds in, your opponent has won and you’re exhausted. Why? Because you spent so much time training that you didn’t give your body or mind a chance to rest and prepare for the fight. Training is important but only as important as the time spent recovering and healing for the next task.

(Photo: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/jan/10/rocky-in-numbers--creed-sylvester-stallone )

Now, I know nothing about boxing. Earnestly, I know nothing about anything, I’m one human who has had thirty-plus years on an Earth which is four-billion, five-hundred and forty-million years old. I can only offer shavings of what experience I’ve been told, ignored, and discovered is in fact important after all. This, I think, tops the bill, as it helps every other thing you want to achieve.

So my question to you is this, what haven’t you picked up, done or enjoyed in a while? Do you think, after a period of rest, you might have more enthusiasm for it? There’s only one way to find out…

… And that is to chill out.

All good things,
Love, Scaramouche.
x