In an atmosphere of perpetual retirement it seems hardly befitting to squawk about taking a break.  From anything.  I mean to say, I’m already broken! The chain that once linked me to productive employment long ago disintegrated. Apart from what appears to be a revolving list of dental and medical appointments, there is otherwise little if anything on the horizon which remotely touches the character of work. Yet today it was time for a break.

You see, the break we all need from time to time is not so much a break from work as a break from routine.  And the longer we ignore it, the more we need it. I trust I need not remind you that getting out of work is by no means an immediate severance from either habit or routine.  The forcefulness of compulsive behaviour is I believe founded on an animal instinct to lessen life’s complications. Yet as pragmatic as it is, it is a predilection not readily abandoned. Indeed in whatever jungle we happen to be performing, a break from habit is always a good idea. It is a good idea even if you don’t know it.

Serendipitously it was a cloudy day today. Clouds are my emotional analgesic. More significantly clouds enable me to remove myself from what I find to be the constantly persuasive allure of brilliance and warmth. The transition to grey and clammy is subduing. Also oddly bracing. We need to quell the monotony to strengthen the ambition.  It is a small price to pay for novelty in a world otherwise unnecessarily blemished by tarsome repetition. Ultimately the repetition is inescapable but the slightest alteration in the regular flight path triggers a unpredictably broader outcome. I suppose in that respect it is a tolerable sycophantic relationship. Honestly I continue to feel that after a momentary absence, recovery of the old and settled ways of doing things is an uplifting indulgence; and, I don’t mind saying, a privilege to which I feel justifiably entitled. It is not something I say with arrogance but rather with the same gratitude with which I view my entire life.

Reasserting life’s intangibles requires occasional abbreviation.