Day 7 - Being Good Tired

You may or may not know that I have a very talented sister-in-law. She has fantastic artistic ability and a wonderful imagination. She has always had a passion for design and has most recently been working doing graphic design jobs but she has had a long history of doing stationery and invitations. Anyway, Mariah has more artistic talent in her little finger than I have in my whole body.

About 10 months ago we began formulating a game plan that would pair us together as business partners. Over the course of the next few months we changed direction a few times, re-vamped, started up, started over and then took a few long breaks when life got in the way. Today was an amazing day because not only did we pick up the ball that we had dropped a while ago but we hurled it 40 feet into the air! Wow! We are so close to something really, really cool. When the time is right hopefully y'all will check it out!

In the meantime today did not feel like work at all, it felt like hanging out with my sister-in-law, brother, and nephew. Merrill was a great baby and let us get a lot done. And where I had been feeling so tired that I couldn't possibly give one of my two days off from CPWM to go to work for this venture, now I am energized and see that this was the complete opposite of giving my last remaining energy. It was, to put it in the self-help sense, a sharpening of the saw or filling up the old bucket.

There is a clip of an interview with Harry Chapin on one of his Cd's and he talks about being "good tired" (Also thank you to Uncle Doug for the fact that I even know who Harry Chapin is). If you don't feel like reading you can listen to it on the link above

"My grandfather was a painter. He died at age eighty-eight, he illustrated Robert Frost's first two books of poetry and he was looking at me and he said, 'Harry, there are two kinds of tired: there's good-tired, and there's bad-tired.' He said, 'Ironically enough, bad-tired can be a day that you won. But you won other people's battles, you lived other people's days, other peoples agendas, other people's dreams and when it was all over there was very little "you" in there, and when you hit the hay at night, somehow you toss and turn--you don't settle easy.' He said, 'Good-tired, ironically enough, can be a day that you lost. But you don't have to tell yourself, 'cause you knew you fought your battles, you chased your dreams, you lived your days, and when you hit the hay at night, you settle easy--you sleep the sleep of the just, and you can say "take me away."'

He said, 'Harry, all my life I've painted. God, I would've loved to be more successful, but I painted and I painted, and I am good-tired and they can take me away.'

Now, if there is a process in your and my lives in the insecurity that we have about a prior life or an afterlife and God--I hope there is a God. If He is-- if He does exist He's got a rather weird sense of humor, however. But let's just-- But if there's a process that will allow us to live our days and will allow us that degree of equanimity towards the end, looking at that black, implacable wall of death, to allow us that degree of peace, that degree of non-fear, I want in."-

Harry Chapin

...I am thankful for being "good tired" tonight.