There are times that I think that people just need a mental health break. As I cannot afford a trip to Chattanooga, much less Cancun, so I have been chilling out with Jane Austen. Specifically Pride and Prejudice movies (the Colin Firth version, thank you very much, is winning the day for me.)

I have never understood why women like Mr. Darcy. He is aloof and pretty much a jerk much of the time. He doesn’t say what he feels, expecting Elizabeth to read his mind and he’s a grouchy bastard who lives much of the novel/movie in a haze of unrequited bitchy adoration of her because he doesn’t always say what he feels although he does say what he wants.

Life, in books or in the real world, is about creating emotional resonance with other people that you want around you.

Yet, I would be lying if I said that when Firth plays him, the cheer magnitude of the want and desire in his eyes would make most grown ups sort of internally swoon. (And don’t even get me started on Mark Darcy’s kiss of Bridget Jones at the end of the first movie of Bridget Jones Diary. That one is for the record books, campers.)

So my vacation in my brain has been about losing myself in things that I absolutely did not enjoy when I was a kid.  I was too busy reading Stephen King novels. As a kid, it was the monsters that made me hold a flashlight on the text of those books under the covers at night when I was told to go to bed. Now, I’m just trying to go back and see what I missed.

I always know when I need a mental health break. It’s not a depression sort of thing, more that I know I’m making simple yet soul-killing mistakes in my work (I hate screwing up on things that I shouldn’t be), I don’t really have the energy to write and that I tend to start hermiting. When you know to slow down your brain, that is a very good thing because sometimes it’s not always apparent when you do.

It’s not you, friends, it’s me. And I’m human, sue me. A tired middle-aged woman right now who is slowly just now processing the last three-to-four years of changes in my life which in many ways were unexpected. I think the best way to describe it is embracing, accepting and living in the moment instead of scrambling for what is supposed to happen tomorrow.

And actually I’m pretty glad I’m self-aware enough to know that.

So the key is to lose myself in something for a little while. Life can’t be all of one thing all the time (I’m looking at you politics and the now more difficult task of finding news for the Daily Buzz behind newly minted paywalls. No worries, it always works itself out.) We are, as I said, more than just a label or a perception.

It’s odd being somewhat cheerful (more so than I was about a month ago) yet also knowing that when you try too hard for too long, mistakes will be made if you don’t recharge the batteries.

Grown-up old school blogging happening here at Chez Coma. It’s not a bad thing.