Previous Challenge Entry (Level 2 – Intermediate)
Topic: Gone Fishing (02/01/07)
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TITLE: Taking the Time | Previous Challenge Entry
By Ruthie Yang
02/03/07 -
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Even though I sat in an office chair, at work, in a city hours away from a lake… I took 10 minutes to mutiny and think about something other than the files in front of me. I couldn’t remember when I had last taken the time to even daydream, to let the creative batteries of my mind truly refresh and regenerate. I know it had been more in the range of months and years rather than weeks and days, so I was “going fishing” in order to keep myself from crashing mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually too.
Too often I made the mistake of thinking that getting on the computer would refresh me. Nope. Doesn’t work – just makes me more frustrated with life what with depressing news stories, time wasted on useless searches, and wading through the smut in order to find one piece of actual useful information. TV didn’t work either as I then got hooked on serial programs that numbed my conscience. Books were a dream rather than a reality to me – a fond past memory of times when I had time to actually finish one and remember what I had read.
The sign was written in pink high lighter on that familiar 3M yellow – the most colorful thing in my cubicle next to the image on a customer’s gift calendar. Pink high lighter always makes me think of grapefruit flavored candy. Now that’s good because that’s what you think of when you’re properly letting your mind go fishin’.
What would it be like to go fishing with Jesus? I’m not talking about net fishing over in Galilee – but just sitting on a pier and listening to the wind, feeling the sun beat down and making my dark hair hot as blazes, hearing the buzz of a persistent mosquito, legs swinging and a thermos of cold lemonade next to us with the cap for a cup. We’re not really there so much for actually catching anything, but just to enjoy the shared experience and talk about whatever.
A minute and 40 seconds left of fishin’ time. The note, with its hardly tacky adhesive, prematurely separates from my shirt and floats down onto the floor. I feel rather defensive, as if that small air current is trying to pull me back into the world of gravity and duty and away from my much needed remaining seconds of lollygagging.
Times up. Calendar in hand I reach for my pink highlighter and etch over Saturday and Sunday the words “Going Fishin’”. I’m taking lemonade, Jesus and some grapefruit flavored candy with me. It’s been way too long.
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