A Night Off, A Night Alone

In one of my educational psychology classes in college, I remember a professor talking about the brain and learning.  He said that when we learn, the brain is like a sponge; it can absorb only to a certain point.  Sponges can only hold so much water before they need to be squeezed out.  Purging is essential for the sponge to function properly; same goes for the brain.  It needs to be emptied at regular intervals to continue to be efficient, even effective.

I'm finding myself in a season of busy work.  Life is very busy right now and the routine sometimes gets the best of me and I get complacent and lazy. 

• the same morning routine.
• the same thing for lunch
• the same search for a new job
• the same evening with family

Are these all bad?  No!  I love my time with family.  Sorin is changing daily.  Katie and I had a great talk at dinner last night.  My days aren't always (or completely) boring.  But I certainly lack a freshness to my daily activities.  I get stuck in a rut.  Certain things lack excitement.  I need to squeeze out the sponge before I can refill.  For me that means a full day off.

For two evenings I'm home alone.  Katie went to Cedarburg for three days to be with family, so I've got run of the house.  And Katie knows this about me - sometimes I just need this alone time to refocus.  Life has been very predictable.  But tonight I knew I was coming home with no pressure or responsibilities to be "on" with family.

Tonight I was able to catch up on a few blogs - less than I would have liked, but that's probably a good thing.  At the same time I checked Facebook and then an interesting thing happened.  A couple people started posting comments on my blog and on my Facebook according to some of the things I'd recently written.  It started a series of small discussions that led me to think proactvely about my next career move.  Katie and I have talked about developing my fitness business and what that would entail.  Tonight I was able to share with some of my friends some of my thoughts and I was also able to see that I can get relevant discussions started with people - this is big if you're starting a business.

My brain needed this.  I believe God had this night set aside for me to decompress from life and be able to engage with people in a way that I rarely have time for.  It was very refreshing.  It's hard to talk about this because I don't want it to seem like I need to get away from family to be productive.  But there is something to be said for retreats - retreats from the normal day-to-day routines that get us bogged down with sameness. 

So I'm happy with the night.  I'm looking forward to tomorrow night.  I need time away like this and so do you?  If you didn't have to answer to anyone for a night, what would you do?  What could you accomplish?  Would it make any relationship better?