My First Full Day Of Hiatus

It's Easter Sunday. Perhaps there could be no greater day than Easter Sunday to rest from my blogging labors. I didn't pick it like that; it just happened by happenstance, but who knows, maybe it was destined, or at least an unconscious thought in my mind guiding me toward this decision to set the blog aside and go on hiatus. To leave the tomb, as it were, and ascend on high toward a more paradisaical place called "time off." I have entirely left behind this body of death and have been translated into the kingdom of retirement. Free time. To kill time. To make quite an ado about nothing except killing time. To have time off. Time for myself alone.

I know the decision came to me suddenly. But it's just as I said yesterday, I've known it for a while: "I've known it for some time. I knew it weeks ago," were my precise words. But weeks ago I hadn't yet made the decision. Weeks ago I hadn't even knowingly thought of taking this much-needed break. In fact, when I look back weeks ago, I was right in the thick of it, in the midst of the excitement of Old Faithful. There was no real thought of taking a break then, a breather, as I now have taken. And think about it, those were overwhelming days; if anyone needed a break, it was me, but I kept right on chugging along. Or, as the old song has it, I "kept on chooglin,' chooglin', chooglin'"...

I probably shouldn't have "kept on chooglin'" through it all, but I can't really say I regret it that much now. Because the things of those days also seemed right at the time. I can look back in hindsight with the best of them, believe me, but I know how little regrets are good for, because you can't change the past. The key thing is what you do with regrets. You make them productive by projecting them into the future. That is, you consider that you will regret the things coming if if you do them, so you don't do them. That is when a hiatus is demanded!

A hiatus is like a tourniquet on an arm seeping blood; the time to staunch the flow of your precious lifeblood is now before you're completely on empty. And one other illustration, not to belabor the point too much, comes to mind -- a similar figure -- how you can't drive a car on empty for very long. For as we all probably know, without proper fueling, constantly topping off your tank, you can't go far, because fuel is the very lifeblood of your vehicle.

I've been working harder than I should be. To be constantly expected to come up with examples for things like that ... it wears on me. And without a breather, a hiatus, I'll continue to be worn out, dried out, worn ragged, and will barely be able to surmount an honest effort even to stagger to a collapsing point near the finish line. I'll be waving the white flag of surrender long before that terrible point. Like today, or yesterday. Yesterday was when this important step was taken, when I announced my hiatus.

Now I am into the first full day of my break. And it's going great so far, with very few regrets. Please understand. It's not that I don't want to be here. It's just that I can't be. I need to have this time off. Perhaps it won't be forever. I can't make promises.