Well I’ve made it half way through the first week. I’ll admit that this is the easiest diet I’ve been on physically, but the most challenging mentally.
The difference between a joy diet and a food one? I’m not depriving myself of anything, except maybe 15 min of my time.
The hard part? Convincing myself I get to feel joy by doing nothing.
So yesterday, I didn’t make my 10:00 pm appointment with me, myself and I. At this point, I’m laughing at how crazy it is that I can’t fit in a mere 15 minutes of doing nothing into my day. Anyway, I finally found it at 11:45 pm last night.
The honest truth? Even though I’ve had an impressive experience so far, the whole day I was actually dreading it. Now that the novelty of nothing was wearing off, would I still enjoy it or would it be pure silent torture?
The reality. I was working on an article about my dog, talking to my mom to get more information. After I got off the phone with her, I was consumed with guilt. The guilt for not being there when my dog passed. It was a horrible feeling and then worse I thought, “Now I have to go sit in a corner for 15 min and think about nothing!” (Add dramatic sigh here.)
The outcome. Doing nothing couldn’t have came at a better time actually. Sitting in silence, thoughts came flooding to me (as I expected). What I didn’t expect were that the thoughts would be comforting ones. Things like, “You couldn’t have done anything if you were there. She knew you loved her. Things happen for a reason and everything is the way it should be” starting flowing into my mind. Then a peace settled on me. It was a soothing balm that my wounded heart needed. Afterwards I fell into a sea of nothingness where I was neither awake nor asleep.
The bottom line: I might not have felt joy, but I definitely felt peace. Looking forward to trying it again tonight.
