Rediscovering The Art Of Doing Nothing

For the last 10 days I have been recovering from back surgery. I know you want to read all about it. I posted the gory details on a back problems bulletin board. It's a little gross and is mostly about me fighting with my body and the aftermath of the surgery. Now things have settled down a little bit and I am really starting to recover.

This has all made for an interesting pause in my life. I am on vacation but have no real obligations to be anywhere. All I have to do is to get better, do excercises twice a day, eat and don't break anything. So this leaves me, my laptop and my ipod together for long stretches of time. There is no constant getting in and out of cars. There isn't even a lot of leaving the house. There is just a lot of sitting in bed in front of the window watching the breeze blow by as I respond to emails and entertain myself on the internet.

The first couple of days was full of the usual catchup. I had to read all my favorite message boards that had been piling up goodies while I had been out. Then I had to respond to emails, clean out inboxes, and write some followup memos to friends and co-workers about things I was thinking about for work and otherwise. Then after a few days everything leveled out. The weekend rolled along and now there weren't even co-workers to bug me. I was not on my usual vacation spree running from place to place, constantly having to re-assemble the things I needed on a daily basis to live comfortably. Instead I was at home, with all my posessions around me and accounted for and not having to do much.

At this point, in any other condition I would have started looking around for projects to do, things to file, places to go, long expansive wastes of energy chasing around something to some location. I could not do these things though. I had a back that now more than ever needed taking care of. I was imprisoned but rather pleasantly between my bed, bedside table, laptop and bathroom.

Honestly I've never felt so relaxed. I've been on a lot of vacations but I'll never forget this one. It was cheap, relaxing, easy on the body and very introspective.