I rolled out of bed two hours late, knowing I was not going to get it done today. “You are a failure of a human being.”

Those words flew through my brain faster than I could stop them. Ouch. What a low blow, self. I could hear the announcers calling the shot: “Mean-Mandy is picking a fight with herself and it looks like she’s winning.”

Alright, where are my boxing gloves? And where’s the coffee?

He was in the kitchen, all kind-eyed and studying my face. My inner fight had actually been going for a few days now. He was even the victim of a sucker-punch or two. I didn’t want to say the wrong things anymore, so I planned to behave myself during our Family Devotion Time.

Coffee warm, I let the couch hold me up beside him. We talked. We read Buechner’s words about guilt, and my mind wandered through the INTJ personality description that says we expect too much out of other people.

Maybe sometimes I expect too much of myself as well.

I tuck my toes under his leg and I tell him that I’m frustrated. No, I’m not frustrated, I’m just not able to think straight today and I don’t like this because I planned on doing some serious writing and I can’t make my brain move in a straight line for more than three minutes so there’s no way I can spend a handful of hours chipping away at those 4,000 words.

I’d already faced a sad day this week. And a tired day. And a frustrated day. Now I’m in a muddy day and I didn’t plan for this and I’m having a hard time sleeping and I’m trying to work with myself but I’m supposed to be writing.

“You don’t have to write.” He reminds me, “Not today. You can work on your process. You have a process for down days and frustrating days, and now you can make a process for muddy-brain days.”

I groan. If things moved faster in my head, I’d launch into all the reasons why I don’t want to do this.

“Everybody has limitations.”

His careful words made me want to cry.

His advice: “Do things that don’t require much mental exercise. No intense writing sessions. Instead, try walking on the beach for some Vitamin D, or paint journals, or have some time with friends, or do some house-work, or some photography. Do the things you want to do but can’t do because you want to spend your time writing. Today you get to do those things and it can be a great day and you can get stuff done!”

So I wrote this post two hours later as an update on how things are going. Except I refused to tell you how little I’d accomplished in those past two hours. Instead, I thought real hard about forgetting the to-do list or the clock on the wall. I gave myself permission to wander through this muddy-brain day and as an exercise in self-exploration.

And I reminded myself that when I was little, my favorite thing to do was play in the puddles and make mud pies.