The birds woke me up yesterday...an event that I had been longing for during the past four months. It is my summer routine to wake with their song in my head, make a savory iced espresso and sit on the wicker porch furniture reading, praying, and delighting in the new day. What sounds like a flowery and only too good to be true ritual is in fact the way I have spent my summer every year since I began high school. I love my summer mornings complete with home grown fruit and a swim all before 8:30.
Yesterday when the birds woke me I staggered from beneath my covers and sat on the floor trying to coax my confused body awake...but the only thing it envisioned was flopping right back down on all of my pillows and fluff for another several hours of rest because inside I felt like it was about 2am. I think I did go back to sleep because 4 hours later I woke up in bed.
Jet Lag is very frustrating. I like to control my body as much as I can by feeding it proper nutrients, exercising, taking medication sparingly, and not intaking substances that would inhibit me from controlling my mind or body. This usually means that I fight sickness and tiredness to the point that I collapse or just cry (Writing that makes me feel ashamedly like a 3 year old, whoops! ). If I try to go to bed early I just lay tossing and turning because my mind refuses to sleep; I get really distracted when sickness places a damper on my activity, so by the time that I can no longer ignore it I have developed a serious infection. I think for these reasons the transition back to the United States and my home has been a several-day process... I freak out because my body is freaking out and then I'm just useless until time has created a stasis between my stubborn resistance to ease and rest, and my body just shutting down on me. When am I going to learn that the birds will still be singing to wake me up in a few more days...after I've allowed myself to rest.
I would like to introduce the one "concrete" thing that I have done besides sleep since being home (to answer Juliet's question). I have been reading an excellent book that I purchased on clearance at Barnes and Nobel on Friday called The First Five Pages. It is a book written by an acquisitions editor about the mistakes made by prospective writers that result in their manuscripts being placed in the reject pile. The topics extend from the type and presentation of the paper to the overuse of adjectives and repetition of common cliches. Reading these tips has confirmed that I paid for a proper English education in which I learned all of these rules and more so that my paper would not be placed in the professor's reject pile also known as the "F" grade.
Beyond common format and grammatical errors I learned about confidence and the inspired gift of writing. Many people can come up with a plot and still others can write a perfectly articulated manuscript, but there is a combination of passionate fluency to using words and images with proper grammar to make prose that is gifted. Anyway, it's a great tool for anyone interested in working as an editor or becoming a published writer.
To touch again on a different subject it is interesting how quickly adventure fades. Perhaps it is my response to recent comments but I catch myself questioning my "complascent existence" currently under my parent's roof in my old twin bed, sleeping away the day, and unemployed. Ah, I am prey to the many stimuli that propell us forward day to day making adventure and out of the ordinary thrill and challenges a marker for success. Chill pill. Where can I get one?