Jim Murray

4 years ago · 2 min. reading time · ~10 ·

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A Perfect Mental Health Day

A Perfect Mental Health Day

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COPYRIGHT 2019, ONWORDS & UPWORDS INC. JIM MURRAY, PROP.Perfect days, these days, are few and far between. As much as you wish they could show up more often, the sad fact is that they don’t.

There’s always something.

But today, for me at least, was one of those rare birds. It wasn’t that anything unusual happened. It was all the usual Sunday stuff. Taking care of the pool, which today just meant turning on the pump. Washing the car. Writing a review of a TV series I’m watching. Cutting the front lawn. Going for a ride down to good old Giant Tiger. Finding a big towel, that I had been looking for for a while. Coming home for a swim. Floating around in the pool to get started on my tan. Then going out to pick up some great fish and chips for dinner.

Nothing really unusual except for the fact that the sky was clear, there was no wind to speak of and the temperature was in the high 20s. (low 80s for my Yankee friends).

But what really made it perfect was my mindset. For one day I really just stopped thinking about the world.

I stopped worrying about how soon the sky would come crashing down. Or lamenting over any of the bullshit being generated by amateur politicians with no real game to speak of.

I didn’t turn on the TV and spent very little time on social media, except to post a couple of things.

Instead, I focused on finding cool trees to shoot for my Tree de Jour series.

I wrote a note to a friend who was wondering what I was planning to do with my life, now that I am not part of anything again.

And that was really helpful because it got me thinking about something constructive instead of all the weird shit that smashes into us every day in this Strange New World we seem to be living in.

I’m hoping that I can find more of these days going forward. I think they are necessary things for all of us.

To give our hardworking minds a break. To turn off all the lights in our heads and lay there in the dark. It’s amazing the things you think of when you’re not thinking about something specific. And it’s amazing what you see and hear when your eyes and ears are open and not focused on anything in particular.

But the biggest change is deep inside, as you calm down and slow down, everything becomes that much clearer.

Don’t expect any major league revelations from this process. Nothing good happens fast. But when you have quieted all the surrounding noise, it becomes that much easier to hear what you are really thinking.

Maybe an answer. Maybe a question. Maybe an insight. Maybe some new thing that you can play with. Who knows? We’re all different and we all go to different places when we decide to to have a mental health day.

I took one today, and it just happened to be a beautiful day, which made it all the better.

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Comments

Jerry Fletcher

4 years ago #1

Jim, Good for you! We have too few of those kinds of days even though we're old enough to know they are needed and how to get there. First you have to learn how to say, "to Hell with it, I decide. And so it goes.

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