I did a lot of work yesterday. Purely physical stuff, cleaning out stalls, mowing, etc. and this morning I’m still coasting on the mental high.
During the later part of last evening, I started to examine why it was I felt so good about doing all that work.
I’ll get to that in a moment, but first I want to take a step back. Over the past few days, I’d been running into a concept that kept pinging off my consciousness. Nothing overwhelming, just little bits of an idea that struck and kinda…chimed. Think of a wind chime: That tinkling ping of noise and, if the sun hits it just right, a bit of color.
Without getting into the nuts and bolts of it, I’ve always believed that if you notice a recurring thing in the randomness of life, it might be a good idea to pause and give it some consideration.
That recurring thing revolved around breaking free – pursuing those things that bring me joy and add color to life.
Back when I started this blog–
Sidebar: It’ll be five years ago, come October.
I talked about a concept that I’d called the “Meh” of the day to day. You can find it here. Granted, that was under vastly different circumstances, but I think that with everything that’s been going on lately, there’s been a build-up of “Meh” that has been sucking the color out of the world lately.
I’ve seen it happening out there. Folk jokingly mentioning that they don’t know what day it is most times, one day flowing into another that’s just like it.
And I’ve identified so hard with that.
So what happened?
First, there was the notion of “Breaking free” that kept chipping away at the layers of “Meh” surrounding me. Then there was the idea of pursuing the things that bring you joy. That was part of what contributed to my decision to mow the lawn.
I know that seems like an odd transition, but hear me out:
I need music like I need to breathe. If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, this wont come as any kind of surprise. The thing is, I haven’t been listening to much of it lately. There have been other things: Audio books and podcasts mostly.
But I can’t hear any of that over the sound of the tractor – so I switched over to music. Now I’ve got a lot of things on my playlist – you never know what you’re going to be in the mood for. Turns out, I was in the mood for loud and familiar. If it didn’t instantly grab me, I skipped right past it.
I wanted songs that hit me. Music that reached into me and played my spine like a seventh string.
And I got it. I broke free to the sounds of grinding guitar and the thunder of drums.
Color flooded back into the world and I no longer had tasks to do, I had challenges. Things I hadn’t planned on doing, became things I wanted to test myself against.
That’s why I’m feeling so good this morning. Not because I did a bunch of physical labor, but because the scales have fallen away. The world isn’t any different, but I’m seeing it differently.
If you’re reading this (Thanks), I want you to find that thing that brings you joy and turn that up as loud as you can for as long as you can. You might not have it in you to go for very long and that’s fine. Duration isn’t the point. Getting the juices flowing again is what matters. Sloughing off the buildup of meh is what matters.
Bringing the color back into the world is what matters.
Thanks for reading.
Be safe out there. Be Excellent to Each other.
I’ll see you on Thursday.
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