Did you know at one time Asheville was called the Paris of the South? I admit I have not heard that term in a while, probably because Asheville has changed so very much in the last 5 years to become a bustling tourist town. Everyone in a hurry to see, taste, drink, hike, and try all the things. But when I moved here in 2001, Asheville had a slower pace. The people downtown were there to drink in the day and culture in a leisurely fashion, be it their morning coffee before work, a stroll from the office to the copy shop to check on a print order, patio lunch meeting, or a tourist in town escaping the bustle of their hurried lives.

Having just come from Birmingham and my fast paced life freelancing for the ad industry, my impatience stood out like a sore thumb. It was like stepping off a treadmill and being able to still feel like you are running. It took me such a long time to just relax. To not feel guilty for being idle. Allowing time to just be.

The saying goes, everyone has the same 24 hours in a day. With the right amount of efficiency, scheduling, and elbow grease, you too can have enough time to conquer the day and still have time to spend with your kids. And for the most part I believe that too. I find myself constantly checking myself on efficiency, and where I can clean up the waste to maximize my time.

So with this kind of mindset going on, it is hard to realized the value of downtime. Navel gazing just feels wrong when you have been on the treadmill of busy, unless you are feeling the physical results of way too much stress. I am finding that downtime is actually way more than letting your body and mind rest and reset. I am finding that if I allow myself the downtime beyond overcoming all that adrenalin, beyond finding the mental space to refocus, I have the mental space to see what I am calling for lack of a better phrase, divine inspiration. Messages from God. Mental downloads. Eureka moments that have no rhyme or reason as to where they came from or what the trail of inspirations are. But yet to get to that place of being led to where you need to be, I find myself struggling with all the old Catholic-style guilt of what I would/could/should be doing instead. I just need to be still enough, with a quiet mind having already given myself time to recuperate for whatever the latest burnout has been. That recuperation always takes way longer than I am will to allow.

So, as I sit down to look at what needs to happen this week, I find myself craving some divine inspiration. Because slamming my head against the wall is not yielding the creative ideas I need (Duh!). Slowing down, scheduling some self care, and trying to remember finding ease this week is not being lazy, it is laying the ground for inspirations. Or at least that is what I keep telling myself hoping it will sink in.

I know it is weird to see a post on Monday. I have been wanting to streamline my web presence so I am not so overwhelmed that I just don’t blog anything outside of my weekly Wednesday articles.