I am sitting in my office staring at my monitor. In front of me is a blank white page of a Word document that will end up being more than 50 pages. The document is slated to be a comprehensive organization wide plan and procedure due in exactly 35 hours.

I sit back in my chair and lean my head as far back as possible until I am looking out the window. I gaze at the deep blue sky and watch as the thin scattered, purely white clouds rapidly pass by.  I close my eyes for a moment and in my head I see myself surrounded by paperwork. Each stack of paper has a project or task associated with it. The stacks keep getting higher as the items on my to do list pop into my head. Soon I can only see a small circle of blue sky at the top of the papers.

In my head all I can say is breathe….. breathe….. breathe…..

It should be that easy right? Just breathe….

I flash back to a time I wiped out surfing. I went over the falls on an overhead wave. I went under the water, the wave broke on top of me and I was held under the water. As I lay there waiting for some sign as to which way was up and which way was down my body began to tell me to breathe.

That feeling that starts in your chest and travels up your throat into your mouth just begging you to open it slighly and take a breath. In my head I knew it wasn’t right, but my body seemed to think it was. As I lay there, caught in the middle of a battle between my body and brain I kept thinking relax…… relax…. relax….

Just as I did I saw the sunlight shining through the water. I stretched out my arms pulled the water down and propelled myself to the surface. My head emerged and in my head I heard breathe……..