Today Skye and I took a ‘mental health day’.
To be honest it didn’t really look much different from any other day other than the fact I gave myself permission to not feel creative or productive or driven by my diary.
I acknowledge that this is an incredibly privileged decision to be able to make before anyone reminds me of that!
Skye and I are not unwell, overly-stressed, and certainly weren’t hiding out from life. We both just were running low today.
Usually driven by anxiety there is no way I could have given myself a WEEK day to just be but, that said, as we procrastinated into the morning and Skye suggested it I didn’t miss a beat.
It wasn’t a revolutionary day – we worked in between nattering, the animals got fed and life admin happened. We had a quiet breakfast outside and a lazy lunch in front of a fascinating documentary and life goes on.
I feel like I caught up with my breath and my racing heart and my to-do lists. I spent time watching the birds we feed daily and noticed habits of our animals that perhaps I miss. I stayed longer in Skye’s stories and we listened more to the news we shared.
The reason I’m telling you this story is because it’s been good. We can’t all take an entire day off but we can certainly find gaps in our thoughts and our doings and I think that’s what this is. Someone said to me the other day that ‘years pass through the spaces between moments’ and I thought about that, a lot.
I have a delicious 4+-year-old nephew and the times I spend with him are like when time slows down. He reminds me to be present and look for joy and appreciate the moments and find reasons to just be.
Today has been that. Those gaps or moments between minutes that we often miss. I’m looking for them now.
We can do hard things (but today wasn’t one of them for me!). I love you.