This is a legacy blog post, originally from my previous website, Mouse House Blog. To see more MHB posts, check out the MHB tag here on my blog.
I know I’ve been super absent, and I’m so sorry. Between school and other things going on in my life I’ve been running pretty damn low on both time and energy. I’m trying to build up some content when I do find the time, with the intention of spacing it out a bit and creating a bit of a buffer for myself. Hopefully you’ll start seeing more of me soon. In the mean time, I had a really nice experience on Tuesday evening that I wanted to share.
I headed out in the afternoon to do my grocery shopping – the local grocery stores offer a student discount on Tuesdays. The walk is less than ten minutes if I cut through the park behind my house. On my way out of Fortinos I turned toward the Mondelez factory across the road and noticed that the sunset was starting to show some pretty colours over the roof. I was carrying a loaded backpack and a very heavy tote bag but I managed to dig out my phone to try and take some photos as I walked – I’m a sucker for a pretty sky. I wish my iPhone camera could take better sunset shots, but I got a few nice ones by playing around with the exposure a bit.
I started catching better glimpses of the colour as I walked down the block, first between Fortinos and Mondelez, then between the nearby high school and a residential neighbourhood. At the next cross street I got this lovely angle of the glowing clouds and I knew it was going to be a wonderful sunset altogether.
I crossed into the park and walked slowly, watching the sky change. The weather on Tuesday evening was beautiful – a steady breeze, but not too cool; I was the perfect temperature in my jacket (and the perfect temperature is not something I often achieve!). It had been cloudy on and off all day. Watching the clouds I could see them moving across the sky pretty quickly with the wind, and the whole sky looked amazing in every direction.
I reached more or less the middle of the big field in the park and stopped to watch the sky for a minute. The lovely weather and the wonderful sight were a kind of stunning combination and I put down my bags and took off my headphones. I couldn’t believe how nice it was. I sat down in the grass for several minutes, then went even further and laid flat out with my arms folded behind my head, watching the clouds pass overhead.
It was so quiet. I didn’t even know this park existed before I moved into this year’s student house, but it seems like it tends to be pretty empty – the only other person there on Tuesday was an older gentleman wandering around with a metal detector. It was so nice to lay there and just feel comfortable, enjoy the sound of the breeze and watch the clouds roll past and the colours change in the sky. I stayed put for about fifteen minutes, until the colours faded and the sky started to grow a little dimmer. I might have stayed even longer, but I had frozen groceries in my bags and urgent homework waiting at home, plus there was the threat of rain.
That fifteen-minute stretch in the park was the most peaceful I’ve felt in months. Certainly the calmest moment I’ve had since school began. I can’t even explain how important it was. My life has been full of stresses lately, and I really haven’t felt relaxed even once since the semester got rolling and all my class obligations got stacked on top of everything else on my mind. I had already been thinking that I should try to spend more time out in the park before the weather turns for the winter, since I really like it out there, but now I’m even more convinced. Any place I can feel that far away from all of my anxieties and pressures is worth spending my time.
I wanted to share this story as a reminder both to myself and to others that those peaceful moments are incredibly valuable. Even when life is crowded and difficult and tiring it’s possible and so worth it to eke out fifteen minutes somewhere calm that you can genuinely forget about things. Lately every time I try to sit back, I find myself feeling guilty for taking time out – feeling like I have too many obligations to actually stop. I have readings, I have assignments, I have work, I have the blog, I have NaNoWriMo to prepare for, I have people to check in with, I have a body to wash and feed on some kind of regular basis – it’s hard to keep track of it all, let alone get enough of anything done.
I had a really rough night after I got home on Tuesday. I stayed up too late wrestling with an assignment that should have been simple, and then my sleep problems acted out and I ended up staying up all night long. I was woozy and unwell when I made it to my 9:30 am class – where I had to present my work. The sleep deprivation had caused other, more physical problems to get worse, so I was in rough shape through two hours of class and then a meeting with the professor I work for. By the time I got home and passed out for almost three hours, I had been awake for twenty-four hours solid. I’ve done worse, but not often. With all of that struggle, I was even more grateful for those fifteen minutes of perfect peace that had preceded it.
Maybe laying in a field and watching the sunset isn’t your idea of a perfect quiet moment, but I encourage you to find your equivalent and to indulge yourself in it when you can. It makes a world of difference.
