Restful Smile more than a good band name

You know you’re doing vacation right when you find yourself sleeping in later and later until finally on your last day of leisure you’ve slept in at least a couple of hours past your typical pre-vacation waking time.

If you’re a morning person I get it; you need to be buzzing and flying around during the early morning hours. I understand this is not optional but it doesn’t make it any less annoying.

But, if your leanings are more nocturnal, and you force yourself to start work mornings early on, then, like me, you probably function at a sleep deficit a lot of the time.

Like most of us, I understand not getting enough rest is not healthy.

So, while I like to do stuff on vacation, if I’m not feeling restored, recharged, rested and regrouped prior to returning to the keyboard, my brain is telling me to take another vacation. And in order to feel good, I need rest.

I found myself taking afternoon naps while on vacation. This is not something I can do while writing, but if I could, I’m sure I’d feel less drained upon completing a piece.

Finishing a post is the payoff for mangling and entangling your way through it.

Once someone didn’t tell me that if I wasn’t completely exhausted at the end of writing a column, I wasn’t doing it correctly. Read this last sentence again if you need to.

To the contrary, I’d like to be able to have enough left in the tank to go out and mow the lawn in 95 degree temperatures (I don’t need to give you a heat index, as I abhor them).

On this most recent vacation I experienced three different time zones in 10 days. I also exercised, ran, hiked and walked a lot.

The beauty of all this activity is that I increasingly embarked on it after the sun had already risen.

I think all this rest and conditioning actually served me well at a Red Rocks concert, too. A lot of my peer group was sitting down. We sat maybe a few times for a total of about 10 minutes while enjoying David Crosby and Friends and the Avett Brothers.

The biggest lesson I learned on this vacation was the importance of rest.

For me, it’s not a vacation if there isn’t lots of it.

Perhaps I’m slowing down, but I prefer to think of it as maximizing what I have left in the tank of Life.

How you feel is sometimes relative to your age.

Most times, however, I believe age can be negated to the point of it being a non-factor when enjoying recreational activities.

But, you have to get your rest and I know it now more than ever.

In order to get your rest without feeling bad over being called old, you need a certain level of self-confidence.

You might also need to disregard all the young people who think you’re an old person who needs lots of naps.

You also may need to disregard anyone who is uncomfortable with recognizing the importance of rest and napping.

Most importantly, you neither have to be old or young to disregard either of these.

Generally speaking, if you’re comfortable in your own skin, you don’t need to have thick skin.

This is because once you are, you tend not to think about what the intentionally sleep-deprived person sitting next to you on the bus with the miserable expression on their face thinks.

Just turn your head toward them, smile, nod empathetically and subsequently return your gaze to the wide blue yonder.