I don’t know about you but I don’t wake up with a full brain every day. Especially if I have not had a good night’s sleep, my brain does not want to cooperate with me. And lately, for some reason, I am not having many consecutive good nights of sleep. Like last night. And today, of course, I planned to write my blog which I could not write yesterday as I was out all day. (Good excuse, right?) So here I am, at my computer, squeezing the words out, painfully. Why don’t I just postpone my blog until tomorrow, you ask? Well, I am too disciplined for that, I’m afraid. And besides, what if I don’t sleep well tonight either? This could go on for days!
Using the word “brilliant” with tongue in cheek, do you have days when your brain is elsewhere, on a virtual vacation, perhaps and nothing brilliant is coming out of it? I’m sure your answer was “yes”. We all do. It seems age has a sneaky way of influencing your brain. The older you get, the harder I think it is to kick start your serious thinking. Maybe that’s not true. Maybe I have fallen prey to what the “experts” tell us.
Okay, so my excuse shall not be age, it shall be lack of sleep. There are days when I can sit down at my computer and spew out brilliant words that please and even surprise me. As you may have guessed, that isn’t happening today. And so I must live with it, believing that it is a temporary affliction.
Why am I blathering on about something so trivial, you ask? The lesson here is that we are not the same person every day. Obvious things aside, some days we feel more brilliant, more alive, more confident. Then there are days when the strong, capable person is nowhere to be found. Do not dismay. Go with it. Accept that it is an “off” day for you and be kind to yourself. Fighting it will only make you feel worse. So today I am going to fulfill my obligation which is to buy food for my horse, deliver it to the barn and walk and groom her. Then I am going to come home and vegetate in front of the TV and forgive myself for being “lazy” today. It is the only way to keep one’s sanity. If you are exhausted, if your brain is not cooperating with you, give it a break! Give yourself a break! There are plenty of days for you to find a cure for cancer, end world hunger or solve our environmental issues. But if today is not a good day for that, then so be it. Do the minimum required of you and then give yourself a pass. You might even do something indulgent like go to a movie where you will sit and eat popcorn with butter (yes, I said butter!) and lose yourself in someone else’s story. Or take a bubble bath, or plain bath, soak in the tub and tell your brain it has the day off. It will reward you for it later!
We are sometimes caught up in old messages we received as children that we have to be productive every day, no matter what. Being lazy or giving in once in a while to your fatigue and/or lack of brain power is tantamount to being worthless. NO!! You can’t be brilliant every day and that’s ok. You can solve the world’s problems tomorrow. As Vivian Leigh said in “Gone with the Wind”, ” After all, tomorrow is another day.” :)) Go California Chrome!!!!!