The Joy of Hemingway Days
Despite suffering from alcoholism and other mental health illnesses, Ernest Hemingway was the king of peaceful days.
If you’re familiar with Hemingway, his characters spend a good amount of time lounging by the beach, talking about art, and eating nice food. Hemingway created a sense of presence in his characters. There was never a time pressure to go from Point A to Point B.
When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest. The only thing that could spoil a day was people and if you could keep from making engagements, each day had no limits.”
― Ernest Hemingway
Each day had no limits. Sounds nice, where can I buy this package?
Right now, it feels like I’m battling limits left and right. Consequentially, I have trouble going to sleep. It takes me passing out with the lights on before my body gives, and even when it does, it’s in the “won the battle, not the war” kind of fashion.
Last night, I tried taking a small nap before working through the night. Before I knew it, my mind went on auto-pilot, and thirty minutes stretched to seven hours. I found myself awake at four in the morning, surprisingly, feeling well rested. Huh. That’s what seven hours of sleep feels like. It’s been a while.
At that point, there was nothing much I could do about my extended nap. At least, I got this whole sleep thing out of my system. Now, I could spend the entire day focusing on work. My morning was filled with hours of writing, investing research, and running errands.
Sometime in the middle of the afternoon, I laid back down on my bed. A small break. That’s it. This small break ended in napping the sun away for a few hours. It was oddly nice. Usually when I take unplanned naps, I’ll start panicking over the wasted time. But, today, it felt easier to accept that my body needed the rest. Rather than spend extra time kicking myself for “wasting the day”, I jumped out of bed and went for a run.
Everything was okay. The day was unproblematic.
I don’t know who else needs to hear this, but these days exist.
Last week, I wrote a post about getting a 100% for anxiety on a personality test. Until then, I had never seen myself as someone who was overly anxious. I thought how I felt was just normal. The cost of being human.
In my mind, it was only a serious condition if my daily life was impaired by my anxiety. My daily life was my anxiety, there wasn’t much of a seperation.
But, a day like today reminds me of how nice it is to exist without over-complications, accepting the days limitations with ease.
This is the joy of Hemingway days.
