When I merged on to the expressway to head way out into the suburbs, I immediately pulled out my phone and started dialing. I thought I'd fill up the time and silence by talking to one of my friends, but no one was available. Instead, I took a breath, put in a CD I love and sang every line of every song, really listening to the words I belted out toward the road ahead of me.
When I pulled up to the client's house where the meeting was scheduled, I took another breath. Her home, nestled into the side of a hill, is surrounded by huge, old oak trees and the sound of the birds and breeze made it feel a million miles from the highway.
The client is a friend, my former life coach who I connected with outside of our work together and who now needs help building her own business. She is high-energy and we had a lot to catch up on. We squealed to see each other, hugged many times, showed pictures of my boy and her new husband, talked fast and buzzed through her beautiful home and the yard outside where echinacea created a butterfly garden. She offered me a cup of coffee before we began our meeting and she whipped out cream and sugar and silver spoons. It was a flurry.
And then, in a silent snap, she stopped. She closed her eyes, pulled out two coffee cups from the cabinet, turned and handed me one of them. She said another former client and friend gave the set of cups to her, each with an inspirational word printed plainly on the white china -- create, motivate, dream.
"I feel like this is yours," she said and handed me the coffee, steaming still, in a mug that said pause. "Funny. It is the only one in the set that is about being rather than doing."
It was the message I needed, clearly. We got a lot accomplished in our few hours together, and I had a chance to listen to the entirety of that CD again as I made my way back into the city. I made lists and outlined some goals for each of us in working together, we talked candidly about money and compensation, and I gave her a week-long blog seminar in a matter of minutes. But even as I drank my coffee, filling my veins and my thoughts with caffeine and adrenaline of a new project with an old friend, of taking a break from my crazy life to take on even more, I could feel the word underneath my fingers: pause.
My day off wasn't sleeping in or laying in the sun. It wasn't cocktails or staying in my pajamas or unscheduled. It was a full day and a day full of energy and anticipation and things to do. But even in that, there was a stillness, a quiet, that little pause that painted the whole day. That was refreshing. That, I needed.
I have a lot of work to do before I get to the place where I can healthfully unplug and wind down and take a real vacation. I need that too, and I know it will be good for me once I get there. For now, I'm going to be good with those days scattered here and there, when slowing down, singing, being still -- even with coffee and CDs and clients -- is enough.
How did you spend your last day off? What gives your week the pause you need?
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