Tomorrow I return to work. This holiday doesn’t feel like it was long enough; these days they never do.
It’s not like summer holidays when I was a kid. My strongest memories of summer holidays are of lying on our old lounge, in a lounge room tinged green from the sun reflecting on the underside of the pull-down canvas blinds. The TV is on in the background with never-ending cricket matches (which I hated) competing with the rumble from the wall-mounted air conditioner vainly struggling to bring the fibro-clad tin-roofed house to a reasonable temperature. The cicadas are the endless background barely audible above the TV & aircon.
I was bored out of my skull in this little country town; too much of a goody-two-shoes to go and make mischief, too nerdy and uncoordinated to go and play with the other kids.
It seemed like those summers, like my boredom, would never end.
Now I’m on the downhill slope from 35. My kids have lots more stuff available to them then I could even dream of, yet still complain “I’m bored!”
But for me, the summers slip by so fast now. I’ve spent far too many of the precious weekend days of my life over the past few years firmly embedded in front of my computer wasting time, yet somehow never feeling rested. Much of that time was spent chasing virtual goals set by a programmer somewhere on the other side of the planet, while I tried in vain to hide from the anxiety that was eating me alive.
Or I spent my time feverishly doing other stuff, mindlessly filling up my time trying to keep the panic at bay. Never resting, always fearful.
Somewhere along the line, I forgot to live; I forgot to honour this day… to rest.
I’ve already rejigged my goals for this year, taking the advice about how to treat this day from The Book. Each Sunday I’m going to leave the anxieties of the week behind and allow myself to rest.
To live again.