Category: Signal Boost

The Lost Art of Not Doing a Damned Thing

Today’s post at GettingOutMore.org.  This one is about relaxing!  Enjoy!

Sometimes it’s hard to sit still. Work hard/play hard is a nice motto to live by, but there is a third element you should always consider, and one that is often difficult for me to attain: Rest hard.

It’s easy to get caught up in the go-go-go lifestyle, especially if you are like some of us and feel like you have been living under a rock for a long time. Either too much work or family responsibilities can make us feel like we are not getting out enough, and so when the weekend comes, you hit the play-button hard. But after a while even that can be exhausting, especially if you have kids and are making a point of dragging them along with you.

A lot of us have fallen into the trap of thinking we have to play as hard as we work, but if you are spending all of your time playing and working, you are really just working all of the time. Some days just need to be lazy days, and we have to refocus our minds to understand that we are okay with that.

Read a damn book

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Living in Fear

New post on Getting Out More.  This one is about living in fear as a creative.  I hope it helps you with the struggle.  Because it is damned real.

–C

Have you ever wanted to do something in your life, but hesitated because that sort of life isn’t for you? For whatever reason, the thing you wanted most in life is not something you feel you are worthy of getting. So you sit back down. You look at the ground. You fiddle and fret your fingers like it wasn’t you who was about to ask the question or stand up and be recognized.

Sometimes life is like that.

I have had a few moments like that. I have them all the time. Most recently, I have looked at what I want in life and how things could improve. This morning, I decided to see what other jobs were out there. Moving to another town is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time and after 20+ years in this one, I have lived here longer than anywhere else in my life. It wasn’t supposed to be like this, but those were the cards I was dealt. Now, I have a job I have been working at for nearly two full decades, in a place just down the hall from where I worked as a student. This wasn’t supposed to be forever. I found myself feeling like a person who got off the train…

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The Obsession with Youth

Today’s post on Getting Out More is more of a reflective piece.  I really need to go someplace new before I get too deep!

They say youth is wasted on the young, and looking back, as a man in his mid-forties, I have to say that doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. When I was a young man coming up, it always felt like someone was saying, “Wait your turn. Your day will come.” And unfortunately it never did. Anyway, not how I expected it to be.

As a young man, I was saddled with certain responsibilities that are inherent to starting out. I chose the path of family man as I also worked to fit my goals and dreams into my life where and when I could. In stolen hours at night when the kids were asleep, I worked on short stories and novels. Sometimes that degenerated into watching Kurosawa movies until 3am because nobody was up to tell me to go to bed. Of course, I would pay for it the next day as I medicated myself with caffeine to keep up with work.

This year, I turned 44 and one of the presents I got was my first bout of pneumonia. I’m still recovering. One of the hardest things to come to term with in this illness has been just how difficult recovery has been. Pneumonia feels like such an old person illness too, or something reserved for frail antebellum children to die from in order to push the plot forward for their protagonist/antagonist siblings. We can credit shitty lungs to the longevity of Jo March as a beloved literary character. Also, why we love Doc Holliday so much too. He was a badass with a wheezing cough and a wit nearly as quick as his draw…

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