It doesn't matter if you're a bohemian creative-type, or a motivated power-drive type... some days you end up burning hours on facebook, youtube, wikipedia, IMDB, or just pictures of cats.
Sure you may have learned something about the Lost Roman Legion (which bunny-trailed you to Military Use of Elephants, then to Efforts to Clone the Mammoth, then to Mitochondrial DNA), but DANGIT that really important thing you really know you ought to do didn't get done.
Whether it be that book you're writing, the songs you mean to write or record, or that shell of a car moldering in your garage (that you keep telling your spouse will someday resemble a motor vehicle with tires and engine and everything!) -- if you don't do it, it doesn't get done.
Easy, right?
And every minute you're NOT doing the thing that must be done, you beat yourself up and guilt out, then drown your guilt in a bowl of apathy-ice-cream.
Or is that just me?
But sometimes we gotta take a break to do something that is worth doing. Something that recharges you, rather than something that just eats up time.
Play with the kids. Read a book. A paper one. Remember those? Go to that durn park that's been nearby the whole time you've lived here but you've never been. Built a rocket. Learn to play ukulele.
For each of us there are different things that recharge you.
For me it's playing music. Ask my wife, I pretty much have a stringed instrument in my hands at all times.
And recently I've gotten into BUILDING guitars. Or at least modding and assembling guitars from random parts, trying out custom wiring tricks, etc, etc.
Here is my baby. It's a 1990 "Partscaster" an old blues surfer guy in Hawaii made and sold to me. It was my first real guitar. But somewhere several years ago the electronics failed. Sad times.
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| 1990 Partscaster, rebuilt 2014 |
Sometimes you need to put off doing the thing that requires huge amounts of brain energy and creative mojo... if only to have recharge time.
What's something you do to recharge?
I know it may sound crazy but to recharge I wash dishes and then sit and look outside my living room window. I wish I could get photos that could show what all I really see outside of that window. It fills my soul with joy. I see amazing sunsets, feisty robins and city lights in the night sky. Oh yes, I also read and cook. It is a good life. Cheers, Ardee-ann
ReplyDeleteArdee-ann, sounds crazy, but in all the right ways.
ReplyDeleteI do that with my office window that looks out onto my humble little suburban street... but at least once every day, in some strange alchemical shift of light and composition, the view becomes beautiful