All in a Day's Recovery

Taking Control

Saturday is the beginning of the weekend for most, at least in our western culture it is. It's a two-day culmination after a week's worth of work and it's  the restoration period allocated for the body and mind for recovery work that requires no input from us. Just as sleep concludes the end of the day for us to release ourselves to recovery, the weekend recovers missing health by freeing  our energies normally directed at and to the work we do. Even when we thoroughly enjoy or work, love it, rest and recovery is an essential element to wellbeing. Of course technology has redefined the recovery once allocated for the recovery more macro-sized muscle and sinew to a more micro sized form via neurons. The neurons transmit impulses to receptors and the synapses facilitate the transition to create the possibility of many things. In not dissimilar fashion, sleep provides the withdrawal period from challenges to allow all things body to release into a period where realignment engages in our subconscious. By the time the hours of night have had their time, an entire body is miraculously rebuilt ready to perform the tasks of life. Of course I am a layman, not a scientist or a neurologist. I only know from my limited perspective what's taking place in the day to day of my own life. I know that periodically I have become so tired I could not think. when I slept, perhaps even thinking I could not get up in a few hours time, I woke thinking perfectly logically and clearly and had wonderful days.

Ordering your future recovery process

Yesterday, Saturday morning, I cleaned and cleared all the areas I work in. This area of my working is indeed like my sleep time. I first put all things finished with back in their allocated place. Beyond that I have two catchall places allocated for the non-allocated things. One is large, almost bench sized, and the other is small, a six inch by six inch space on a shelf. I leave things on these two spots because the relieve me from wasting time allocating when I am not yet ready to allocate or indeed put back. because my work has changed so much to include the necessity of drawings and photography, filming too, I usually keep what I might have stowed or discarded straightaway before this era in my life. Some things are a reminder of what I have yet to do, write on, photograph or draw. My camera and phone have become my memory aids for many things too; alongside my journals and drawings, whether on bits of wood or paper.

What is the meaning of recovery?

Recovery comes from the Anglo-French word rekeverer meaning to regain consciousness. The Old French recovrer means to come back, return; regain health; to procure or to get again. It's not at all to distant from our word recuperate, which again is to recover. This regaining of health or strength has a sense of getting something (anything) back. Something lost or being lost. recovering my tools, restoring wood to its place, is all part of the recovery and the wellbeing it brings to our lives. By noon on a Saturday the recovery programme is well under way. I am never lazy or late about clean up. I found many years ago that without it i could not rest, could not recover, could not settle.

The antithesis to the consequences of industrialism

Take time out to recover the open spaces and the lost places by putting things away. Tools lost become found. Floor and bench sweeping is recovery of clear thought as is bagging the shavings and choosing tools for the next phase of working. The weekend recovery and restoration begins the recuperation. It is the antidote to a now more vintage phase of the ever-unfolding Industrial Revolution and now also its ever-present Techno-Industrial version of the continuum from which often there seems no escape for many.