Blind for Tax Purposes…

I’m extremely myopic, which means when I’m wandering around with naked eyes I need to hold things about two and a half inches from my eyeball to see them clearly. (Eyeball, because that’s too close for both eyes, so I close one.)

Generally, of course, my eyes are not naked. I wear contact lenses most of the time, along with glasses for near vision, and different glasses for far vision.

But on Mondays, my eyes are au natural all day long. I remove my contacts Sunday night, and don’t put them in again until Tuesday morning.

This lets them have a nice long rest, so I’ll be able to wear contacts my whole life long. (Or at least until I get cataracts that “ripen” enough that Insurance will pay to have new lenses popped into my eyes.)

Of course, without my lenses I am legally blind. So we joke that I spend one day a week blind for tax purposes. (It’s just a joke. I don’t actually claim the exemption, of course.)

The thing is, most of the work that I do is visual. Like so many others I stare at a screen for my living. Which doesn’t work so well when I have to be a couple of inches away to see it.

So on Mondays, I don’t work.

Which means that I’m resting more than just my eyes.
And it turns out to be much more valuable than you might think.

I work pretty much all the time I’m awake, on the other six days of the week.

But on Monday I take time to sleep in. To rest. To knit, read books, study things just because I want to learn about them. To walk around my yard and listen to the birds singing and the wind chimes playing in the breeze. To play the harp or the recorder, or the leaf trombone on my iPhone. To tap out short stories.

To unwind and rejuvenate.

It’s amazing how much better I feel on Tuesdays.

It almost makes me wonder if I should take a few hours out of every day to relax and do stuff that’s not work.

Almost.