Guilty Pleasures

I’ve been on self-imposed vacation for a week and a half – the way I started this should give you an idea of where my head is about ‘taking time off’.  ‘Imposed’?  What is that about?  This morning I woke up feeling guilty that I had been away from my website all this time, had barely looked at Facebook or Twitter, and had spent quite a bit of the time on my couch.  Why do I have to push myself so hard?  And why are pleasures, like reading, guilty?  I read good books, not just the mysteries I love.  Actually I didn’t read one mystery.  See, I’m good!  I read “My Song” by Harry Belafonte, a must for our generation and those coming behind us, to understand where we have come in this country, especially to those of us who think change is so so slow. I saw him in concert several times, and never thought about where he might be staying after he was done entertaining me.  Even when we think of ourselves as ‘informed’ in many ways we are oblivious.  Even me.  Next I powered through “Conversations with Jacqueline Kennedy”, a good choice with the other bio, because it’s about the same time period and Belafonte had quite a bit to say about the Kennedy’s.  I was surprised at how clueless the Kennedy’s seemed about race. Or about the fact that their way of life was just that: their way of life.  And definitely not the life many folks lived or live in this country of ours.  I also read Scott Turow’s book, “The Laws of our Fathers”, oddly enough about the same period, though that was not my intention.  My son-in-law gave me two books by Mumia Abbu-Jamal, which my partner has been reading. My turn next, though my reading will be curtailed by all that I have to catch up on.  I am sitting on the other couch now, watching the fire to make sure it doesn’t go out, so that it will heat the house the way it is supposed to.  Every now and then I glance at the other couch, the one I lie on when I read, with some longing.  I must take another week, and not wait so long to do so.  When was my last ‘time out’?  I am such a ‘do-er’, I have a hard time slowing down and taking a breath.  to say nothing about letting myself enjoy it.  Surprise surprise,  I have several friends who are always in constant motion, and have a hard time with physical and spiritual rest as well.  One of them doesn’t even seem to know what that  means!  What will happen if I stop for a month?  What a concept.  It makes my stomach turn over, just thinking about it.  I used to think I was afraid of becoming a slug.  I am sixty-eight!  I doubt there is much chance….and I should know that by now.  By next Monday when I blog, I promise I will have chosen the week of my next ‘break’.  Hold me to it.