It’s 7.45am, and this is me.

Still in PJs, bucket of coffee in hand (it IS international coffee something-something day today you know) and on the couch. We have all breakfasted on eggs and smoothies (not green, and definitely not in jars), the second load of washing is on the line, I’ve replied to all of the emails and texts about work, so I should be basking in my industriousness on day off.

Yet somehow I am feeling strangely guilty.

The kids are at my feet playing Lego together, making up some block shaped other-worlds of their minds. They are happy.

We have had a really fun weekend of activity in Brisbane, so it’s not as if they have been cooped up in the house. I just asked them if they want to ‘do something’ or are they happy to play, and they said, “Stay here. Play! We love home days.”  I made some adventurous suggestions, just in case, and they declined. They just want to stay in their PJs and play here.

Yet somehow I am feeling strangely guilty.

What is this guilt, where does it come from, and why do I question it?

I suspect it stems back to my first boyfriend- Rod says the first cut is the deepest- and without ever knowing it, he made some incisions that have never really healed.  That boy was kind, and he would be surprised and probably even saddened to know that some of his words still open me up from time to time. There was no malice intended- we were just figuring ourselves out. And of course, we aren’t together, which means that we were of different philosophies anyway.

Today, as I sit here, the very picture of comfort and repose, I have a snippet of a sentence worming it’s way under and over the sulci and gyri of my grey matter: You NEVER want to DO anything.

And I guess in a way he was right. If doing means going out, running around, seeing things, walking places and immersing my physical body in unfamiliar places, then yes, I often doing want to “do” anything.

So many of the things I like to “do” involve me sitting still, looking slothful. So many of them are constructs of the mind. I love to read, to write, to meditate, to dream, to play mind games with myself, to think about the future, to dream, to remember things and people in my past, to make up stories, to reflect, to make connections, to dream, to recite song lyrics as poems in my mind, to take photos in my head, to design new businesses for other people to do, to dream. Always the dreaming.

And dreaming takes time.

Do you have time to dream? Do you have a dream to share with me today?

…From The Ashers xxx