Thursday, August 27, 2009

The Best 15 Minutes in my Day



Most of the time, I waste time.

I sit in front of a computer a lot of nights or mornings before work playing games or checking emails or mindless surfing. In other words, all visually stimulating things. No time for my brain to rest. Just mindless busy work, nothing that satisfies.

Today I laid on the couch and just listened to my house and the world outside. Not a huge amount of time, maybe 15 minutes at best. Ever since Mr. Data's latest episode, I've been more mindfull of taking time to spend with him, realizing that I don't want to miss opportunities that might not come again.

So I laid there, with him curled up by my head and listened to him purr which grew softer as he started to get sleepier. And then, the other sounds became more clear. The rain hitting my windows. The sound of a car driving through the rain. The sounds of my refrigerator apparently having a conversation with the sink pipes. The sound of the elevator repairmen welding something from the basement six floors down. The dull thump of the bass from my downstairs neighbor's stereo.

It was like eavesdropping on the world for a second.

But it was interesting how much calmer I felt after those 15 minutes. No thoughts. No worrying. Just a few minutes of nothing but being still and letting life go on instead.

Best 15 minutes I spent today.

2 comments:

  1. We do lead such busy lives, don't we? There's so much stimulation around us that we're forgotten what it's like to just sit in silence, listening to the world around. Mr. Data was probably the happiest cat in the world as he fell asleep curled up beside you.

    BTW, very impressive weight loss! Hmm, instead of buying cookbooks, how about printing some nice recipes off the internet? Do you have a color printer? 'Cause you could put those recipes in a binder and make your own cookbook for cheap! It'll be way better too because it'll have only the recipes that you want.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Good idea about the recipes off the internet...I'm pretty sure that I could find most of the recipes that we're working on somewhere. Or at the very least borrow the book from the library and at least try a few recipes on my own before I commit to buying it. Although I did pick up a cookbook on sale today at borders...savory and sweet tarts sort of book and there's recipes I could see making. And it was only 7.99 versus 25.00

    ReplyDelete