R & R

Places to go, things to do, people to see.  Well, after a fashion.  I need to go from the house to the shed so that is a place to go.  Sitting and sleeping count as things to do.  Later in the week I will go out, so there are the people to see.
I am fond of saying that to everything there is a season.  Even the seasons of growth and leaning know abundance and leanness.  We have had some trees cut down.  We made a point of keeping a sample of each.  They all contain rings.  We can tell from them, when there was a drought or fire or flood.  They tell a story.  It was obviously not always raining when it was supposed to.  Sometimes rains were delayed.  Sometimes worse things happened.  But they all survived.  They all lived to tell the story.  Then we came along.
I can take stress, and sometimes I can take more than I think I can, but I always need a time away from stress.  A time to recharge the batteries.  Everything runs out.  Batteries die (especially the batteries at our place).  Our ideal is to be able to live off the grid, but that is not possible at the moment without incurring great expense.  Even our electricity supply will run out one day (in over one billion years the sun will run out of gas as it were).   Right now, solar seems to be the great white hope.  It looks like it is working ok on the roof, but our place is littered with little things that are supposed to run on solar that either don’t work now, worked really poorly, or have never worked.
Constantly giving out without receiving is a recipe for disaster.  And I know all about recipes.  I eat regularly.  When anything is not replenished it runs out.  Some things can go a long time, but not forever.  When I planted trees I made a pact.  I will plant but I won’t water.  It really was touch and go for some of them trees.  The lack of rain meant it was a real long time between drinks.  Fortunately, we have just had 150 mls. so that problem is alleviated for a while.
Without water those trees would have died.  Without r & r I would die (literally I will do so eventually anyway, even with lots of water). Sometimes I just need to chill out.  Sometimes I just need to be refreshed.  Sometimes something in me has gone awry and needs to be put right, so I can engage effectively when I need to.  Even the greatest warrior (that is not me in case you were wondering) needs to withdraw from a battle occasionally.
Although I am just someone who makes up the numbers, there is a right way for me to go.  If I am constantly busy there is a good chance I will miss it.  What I am doing may seem right and proper, and it may be, but if I do not get some r & r it is guaranteed I will burn out.  That helps no one – least of all me.
Now I just need to make sure I have not overcompensated by getting too much r & r.