Is It Really Time Off?

NEWS

We’re getting closer and closer to the celebration launching UPositive Creativity and Life Coaching. It’s Friday evening, September 19, from 6-9 pm at HA Gallery in Nashville. There’s going to be hors d’ouevres, of course, a skit about right and left brain conversations, motivational art, music, a Q&A period, and lots of interesting people with whom to mingle!

I tried last week, so I’ll just try again this week, to get the e-newsletter out. So far, I have the design of it (major cyber-accomplishment for me) and I’ll be adding copy, hopefully, tomorrow. Look for it by the end of the week. If you’re not already on my mailing list, please let me know, or visit the Website, www.UPositive.com for the newsletter link.

The second book in the series, The UPositive Guide to Time Management for Creative People, should be out by the end of the month. I’m waiting until after the party to finish it up and do the styling. So far, Shirley Geier has done two gotta-see illustrations for it!

Is it Really Time Off?

This was my birthday weekend. I decided I wanted to redo my back patio, as it had accumulated a lot of leaves and displaced dirt patches, and some potting soil bags from the front yard. The patio chairs needed some cleaning, and it was looking a bit neglected. I never spend a lot of time back there myself, but it’s the entrance to my finished basement where the nonfiction and other groups meet. I’d always had plans to plant some shade-loving greenery, like luscious ferns and columbine and all sorts of things, but never gotten around to it.

The patio’s an odd shape. Two triangular corners of soil, two short rectangular strips along the sides, and one long rectangular strip along the foundation of the house. Mostly boring pebble cement and very, very little planting area. There’s one Rose of Sharon tree beside the gate, which provides nectar for hummingbirds just outside the window here by my computer. Love that part!

I spent two entire days doing the physical labor of moving things around, buying and lifting and dragging a half dozen bags of marble stone chips and red lava chips. Another half dozen bags of topsoil. Eight decent-size plants (all on sale this time of year!), garden tools from front to back of house, up and down the hill. Swept the patio about three times. Laid brick as edging along about a third of the area, and put brick down along one of the short sides. Potted three of the plants for the brick area. Spray painted to my heart’s delight. (I love spray paint, but it doesn’t go very far, and always takes twice as many cans as I figure.) Since I decided on white rock with red lava rock as accent, I sprayed two of the plastic chairs a matching maroonish red, sprayed the containers for the plants; sprayed the wheelbarrow and two of the shepherd’s crooks a rust-reducer undercoat; sprayed the ugly blue trunklike storage bin, two ashtrays, and a garbage pail the matching red. Almost sprayed the visiting cat, but he moved too fast! Set white and red rock in two of the triangular corners, and put in one of the two spreading junipers. Tried that landscaper’s cloth, but I’d rather pull weeds.

All this to say: two days of doing purely physical (and enjoyable), non-brain-taxing (and enjoyable) work. Basically, a break for my left brain, which has been working overtime on UPositive Creativity and Life Coaching.

I love working on the business. I totally love seeing my clients. But working mostly from home on the Internet-based products and newsletter and invites and website and eBooks, and having an unending To-Do list (which is true for every entrepreneur), with my office in my home and no “going home” at 5 or 6 or even 7 pm, has been exhausting.

I slept really well the last two nights. And I woke up feeling remarkably refreshed, clear-headed, re-inspired without effort, and ready to go! Doing the opposite, using opposite energy not only lets your usual energy replenish, but gives it the space to readjust to itself, and to re-center from all the activity that part of the brain has been doing.

Take some time to do the opposite. Put it on your To-Do list. You accomplish much more afterward!

It reminded me that sometimes getting away from it all is the best thing you can to do accomplish it all. Gee. I kind of remember that from….oh, wait….yes, my own video!! And my own eBook.

Sometimes it’s just a matter of checking in with your own wisdom and actually listening to it!

As always, thoughts, comments, additional ideas are welcome.

--Batya