Restart button

Naps are a beautiful thing.

I was having a tough day at work today. Part of my job includes putting together PDF files, but the program that I use wasn’t working—it was holding everything up and stressing me out.

I spent about an hour trying to fix the problem. I’d try printing from other applications or re-mapping my printer set-up and nothing seemed to fix the problem.

“I'm about ready to give up on this hunk of junk!”
“You always say that.”
“I mean it, this time. I'll never get this boneheaded contraption to work.”
“Yes, you will. And you'll win first prize at the fair tomorrow.”
“Hmmmph!”
“...and become a world famous inventor!”

Then it dawned on me that my computer may not have restarted yesterday. They ask us to keep our computers on over night because that’s when a lot of automatic updating goes on. But a computer needs to reboot every day or else it just gets too worn out, so they ask that we restart it at the end of every day. Maybe I'd forgotten yesterday. So I tried restarting my computer—problem solved!

I take a late lunch. It was about 1:10 pm and I hadn’t eaten since 7 am. I was still a little stressed from the PDF problem earlier in the day, plus I had to cancel a market with a radio station in Philadelphia—the poor guy, his name is Neville and I’ve only been working with him for four months, but for some reason every schedule I buy from him I end up canceling, its nothing he does or even me, it’s the darn clients, but every time poor Neville earns a commission when I buy the schedule, then he loses it a week later when I cancel. I feel bad every time I cancel with someone, but when my four month relationship is nothing but cancel after cancel, it’s pretty stressful to have another cancellation order come up—all that, plus I was dying of hunger.

The company that does all our printing brought in some doughnuts, so I had one in an attempt to curb my hunger, but seeing as how its nothing but sugar (chocolate doughnut with chocolate frosting) all it did was drain even more of my energy. I was so burnt out that I felt like going home for lunch and never coming back.

“Those pack horses ‘r plum wore out and so ‘m I.”

After a quick lunch (accompanied by a short Xbox game and a few select scenes form Pirates of the Caribbean) I decided to spend the majority of my lunch break taking a nap. Conveniently, I live only 3/5 of a mile from work, so when I take naps on my lunch break, they’re real naps on my very own bed.

“Now, close your eyes and go to sleep.”
“Why?”
“Oh, everybody has to sleep. Figaro goes to sleep and Cleo... and besides tomorrow you’ve got to go to school.”
“ Why?”
“Oh, to learn things and get smart.”
“Why?”
“Ahh… (yawn) because…”
“Oh.”

The nap totally replenished my energy and reset my mood.

Its amazing what a reset can do. It can salvage a pathetic performance in a video game, over come a scratch induced stall on a DVD, recalibrate your PDF creator, and re-ignite your tolerance for the rat race of work.

“I got to go home and take a nap.”
“It's 10:30 in the morning!”
“I'll tell you, I am wiped.”

About half way into my mission the president instated a mid-day siesta hour. I guess too many missionaries were complaining about being exhausted as an excuse for not producing the work related statistics expected of them.

Before the siesta-lunch program the Nevada Las Vegas West mission averaged right around 100 baptisms a month; after eight months of daily siestas, we were baptizing over 175 in a month.

What would it be like if our country adopted the siesta hour during our workday? Look at the countries that do: Spain, the Latin American countries… I think it’s the one criterion needed for a country to be upgraded from a third-world rating to second-world. Just imagine what it could do for a first-world country!

“So this Da Vinci sleep is working out?”
”Oh, I'm percolating, Jerry. I'm telling you, I have never felt so fertile. I'm mossy, Jerry. My brain is mossy.”