As my 44th birthday (technically my 45th; seems nobody ever counts their original birthday as 1, as it should be. even though i will be 44 years old, it is technically my 45th birthday) rapidly approaches (unlike the end off this sentence), I have decided to divulge some information about myself based on a list of "10 Things You Must Give Up to Move Forward" which I found on the interwebs that were created by someone much brighter than I am (as indicated by the fact that I cannot recall the source). <~~thought you'd never see that period, didn't you?!
1. Letting the opinions of others control your life
2. The shame of past failures
3. Being indecisive about what you want
4. Procrastinating on the goals that matter to you
5. Choosing to do nothing
6. Your need to be right
7. Running from problems that should be fixed
8. Making excuses rather than decisions
9. Overlooking the positive points in your life
10. Not appreciating the present moment
Worry not, intrepid reader. I will not be going through all of these in one fell blog post. Nope. For your continued reading pleasure I will drag these out for a few posts. Perhaps 3. Or maybe 5. You'll just have to tune in later to find out. Let's jump right in with number
5. Choosing to do nothing
This is, as present, nearly impossible for me to do. I am in motion most of the time, and when I seem idle, my brain is still trying to glom onto at least one or two of the ideas that are flying around in my head. This makes it difficult for me to fall asleep, or to return to sleep should I be lucky enough to awaken during the night.
This past Saturday I chose to try to do nothing of import and drove 30 minutes to go window shopping at stores that are 5 minutes away. My intent was to use the drive time and the different location as a mini-escape. Turns out that it was an impromptu lesson in doing nothing, as I had to stand around and wait 25 minutes for a nice mechanic named Mike to come along and rescue my keys that I had locked in my car for safe keeping. Good times.
In the coming year, I will, unfortunately, have plenty of time do do nothing. Which I will promptly put to use by working out more, being more creative, blogging more, and continuing to chase after that dream of inventing a perpetual motion machine (ok, maybe not that one). Does it count as "choosing to do nothing" if I schedule time to do nothing? I think it does.
As I have used up my comma quota (quotient?) for blogging today I will leave you with this: Which one of those 10 Things do you think would give you the biggest challenge? The least? Start with that one and work your way toward the biggest. I will be.
-Gene-
I have a lot of trouble doing nothing. NOthing becomes guilt becomes something. I need to work on it. Because sometimes nothing is the one thing I need to do most, to recharge myself for all the necessary somethings. Did that make any sense? I don't think so. Oh, and sorry about the keys :)
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