Saturday, September 10, 2005
Naps...
I just woke up from a nap after having gone into work for a couple hours early this morning. And I have to say, it was the most wonderful thing that happened to me! I love naps. They're so refreshing! ...and comfortable ...and warm ...and cozy. I have the best dreams when I nap, I love snuggling under the covers as I fall asleep, and its rare that I wake up from a nap without a smile on my face.
I used to hate taking naps. It meant that I would miss something happening during the day, and I HATED missing things. People were up and about doing stuff...I wanted to be a part of it! People were playing a game...I'd miss the fun! People were going out somewhere...I'd be left behind! Most of my life, actually, I've been like that. It's like I've been living life waiting for others to do things so I can join them, instead of living my own life that may or may not coincide with what others are doing. And it took me a long time to realize that I was doing it. Even now, it's still a hard habit to break (and I'm reminded of a Chicago song now...). I catch myself waiting for things to happen still, and it's frustrating...because those little moments that happen now remind me of myself a couple of years ago...and give me a view of how I used to be. Man, was I lame! (Hahaha...how often do you read a blog in which someone accuses themselves of being lame in a positive tone of voice?) And what's sad is that I didn't realize that I was missing out on so much more because I was waiting for what others were doing before I moved my life forward. All of my life I've felt just one step behind my peers...and no wonder! I was...always waiting for them to start something before I followed suit. What a way to live!
These days I make my own choices. I wake up and decide what my day will be like. I sometimes have to turn down invitations to do things because I'm busy with something that I planned for myself. And its so refreshing. I feel like I've grown to catch up with my peers, in a manner of speaking, because now I'm forging ahead into the great unknown of a 20-something's world with the rest of them. And I make tons of mistakes. And it's wonderful...because they're MINE, not always someone else's that I just learn from. I meet my own people, I do my own errands (not do them when someone else is going to do them), I buy stuff because I want to (not because someone else is buying something and I want to be like them). Like waking of from this nap just now...on a metaphoric level I'm waking up from a 23-year-long nap to rediscover the world around me the way I want to see it. And it is a beautiful world!
It's funny...as I read over what I've written so far, I realize how completely childish this all seems. It seems like something that a person much younger than I should have figured out and moved away from. But, ya know, who cares when others figured it out? What's important is that I've figured it out now, and I have a whole life waiting for me to live the way I see fit to live it. The 'old me' would have gone on to worry over how long it took me to figure this all out. But what's the sense in that? Silly, silly, silly. We move on...
And so I leave you with a song lyric that I like to put up as an away message on IM when I'm in a certain kind of mood...this mood works well for it:
Time is a valuable thing--
watch it fly by as the pendulum swings,
watch it count down to the end of the day,
the clock ticks life away.
This can mean different things in different situations, obviously, but now? It's a warning. Don't let life pass you by. The clock is always ticking. Pick up and forge your own path, don't take the one already laid out for you. Robert Frost took the road less traveled, and it made all the difference. I take that to heart...I do my own thing...I go my own way.
And I take naps!
I used to hate taking naps. It meant that I would miss something happening during the day, and I HATED missing things. People were up and about doing stuff...I wanted to be a part of it! People were playing a game...I'd miss the fun! People were going out somewhere...I'd be left behind! Most of my life, actually, I've been like that. It's like I've been living life waiting for others to do things so I can join them, instead of living my own life that may or may not coincide with what others are doing. And it took me a long time to realize that I was doing it. Even now, it's still a hard habit to break (and I'm reminded of a Chicago song now...). I catch myself waiting for things to happen still, and it's frustrating...because those little moments that happen now remind me of myself a couple of years ago...and give me a view of how I used to be. Man, was I lame! (Hahaha...how often do you read a blog in which someone accuses themselves of being lame in a positive tone of voice?) And what's sad is that I didn't realize that I was missing out on so much more because I was waiting for what others were doing before I moved my life forward. All of my life I've felt just one step behind my peers...and no wonder! I was...always waiting for them to start something before I followed suit. What a way to live!
These days I make my own choices. I wake up and decide what my day will be like. I sometimes have to turn down invitations to do things because I'm busy with something that I planned for myself. And its so refreshing. I feel like I've grown to catch up with my peers, in a manner of speaking, because now I'm forging ahead into the great unknown of a 20-something's world with the rest of them. And I make tons of mistakes. And it's wonderful...because they're MINE, not always someone else's that I just learn from. I meet my own people, I do my own errands (not do them when someone else is going to do them), I buy stuff because I want to (not because someone else is buying something and I want to be like them). Like waking of from this nap just now...on a metaphoric level I'm waking up from a 23-year-long nap to rediscover the world around me the way I want to see it. And it is a beautiful world!
It's funny...as I read over what I've written so far, I realize how completely childish this all seems. It seems like something that a person much younger than I should have figured out and moved away from. But, ya know, who cares when others figured it out? What's important is that I've figured it out now, and I have a whole life waiting for me to live the way I see fit to live it. The 'old me' would have gone on to worry over how long it took me to figure this all out. But what's the sense in that? Silly, silly, silly. We move on...
And so I leave you with a song lyric that I like to put up as an away message on IM when I'm in a certain kind of mood...this mood works well for it:
Time is a valuable thing--
watch it fly by as the pendulum swings,
watch it count down to the end of the day,
the clock ticks life away.
This can mean different things in different situations, obviously, but now? It's a warning. Don't let life pass you by. The clock is always ticking. Pick up and forge your own path, don't take the one already laid out for you. Robert Frost took the road less traveled, and it made all the difference. I take that to heart...I do my own thing...I go my own way.
And I take naps!
// posted by Nina @ 12:07 PM 
