I don’t know about you, but I need to slow down, my mind is a jumble with all I think I should be doing.  When I was younger, I had a problem with being overwhelmed by newspapers and magazines.  There was always so much in print to read.  I am realizing now with Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Blogs, word games, the news, and social media in general, I can get so easily  trapped in  so much input it begins to play on my mind.  And what about the output….likes, comments and expected critiquing.  Sound familiar? Lately I have been having rest and renewal where I just sit, not even meditate…just plain sit and the quieter it is the better…no music, TV, not even comforting tapes of ocean waves  or summer rain. In fact doing nothing, hearing nothing but my breath and feeling my chest rise. Have you ever thought like me, that there is just so much noise, and that includes what is in our minds.  This chaotic world of ours does not seem to lend itself to peace and quiet externally or internally.  Going back to social media after a rest from it and going slow my head seems to help make life more sense and I have more energy.  I have also taken to the old pen and paper and begun to journal again…half diary, half plans, and a whole lot of getting out thinking on paper.  Thinking that once sat as a monkey on my shoulder or as a friend said, “a circus in my head.”  Now, of course, there may be an exception to this, if our minds are filled with good thoughts of the past and the future.  But then that is not silence either. But it sure beats the negative, anxious, and stressful thoughts arising in our minds.  After I started writing this blog entitled, “I Need a Rest,” I have been practicing what I preach.  Maybe it is because I am cutting back on social media and finding the solitude my mine has been craving for even if it is to nurture the flowers on my balcony and hear the birds chirp. A writer friend and I happen to be writing about the same topic and I quote something she wrote:  “If there is a way of living where you may get fewer things done, but you would enjoy them more.  Would you be interested?” And Rick Warren of Saddleback church writes: “How much of your day is spent in silence?  What might change about your life if you made more time for silence and great moments.”  Think I will do a gratitude list, take a bath with bubbles and a candle, do relaxing exercises. And then I am going to fall asleep in the silence under my down comforter with the window open repeating a prayer my father shared with me as a teenager: “I met God in the evening when the day was past and gone.  His Presence was my pilot sailing or’e the dawn.  Many were the cares and and troubles there arose unseen to meet, but now the shades of evening fall with peace and faith to slumber with his Presence overall.”