1 post tagged “personal journal freewriting observational”

I'm lying back in bed, it's a weekend lunchtime and the pale Yorkshire sun is casting irregular shadowy patterns on the curtains. I'm in that half-light, between awake and asleep. The ease of dreams and slumber are still close to the surface and the care and concern of the day is yet not fully upon me. I have that delicious feeling, the one you only have, when you're folded inside the twists and turns of a duvet!

I'm imagining the warm sting of shower, which will shortly drench me into full alertness. The bitter sweetness of that first steaming cup of coffee I have yet to taste; the sweetness of a small piece of a Thornton's chocolate reindeer which I have tucked away in the back of the wardrobe and the fact that in exactly four hours and twenty four minutes, Manchester United will be kicking off against Middlesbrough in the F.A. Cup. The game is being televised live and I'll be watching the spectacle... It's going to be a good day!

Then it hits me... Sometimes I go for days, even weeks without ever feeling or being this happy!

I forget to look at the world I'm living in. I neglect its taste, scent and touch. I don't even hear the swell and the silence of its sounds swimming all around me. I fail to feel, as the pulse beats within me and the breath of life passes over and through me. Instead I stumble around, half conscious in the twilight of my own mind with the auto-pilot fully engaged, through endless seconds, hours and weeks, time which will never return. All the while far more deeply asleep then I am right now in this bed.

It's happening now my life... Inside me, in front of me, all around me. I should be present at its unveiling, not sleepwalking through it. Because I can't go back, I can't  reclaim or re-live one single solitary second of it. This is most definitely not a rehearsal.

I want to ensure that this moment and all those that succeed it are viewed with renewed eyes. Because the beauty and gift of my unique life is that all my humanity is contained inside it. I'm the only one in all of space and time who is living this life, its mine and only mine, in all its unrepeatable passing. At any single moment I have the chance to start paying renewed attention to how it flows and feels. To change course if I'm losing my way or retrain my tired scripted habits. I can discard the old lines I have been mumbling without feeling or passion and throw out the tired and cliched. Its my life, this is my time. My own unique irreplacable portion of eternity.

"Time to get up!" I hear myself say... Time to move, live, love and breathe. As I leave this sheltered space, pull back the covers and head for the shower. I heart that quiet still voice of comfort that lives inside me say. "Good move John, welcome to the rest of your life..."