time

Hi. Long Time No Type.

Hi. Its been a while.

I wish I had some extremely life changing event that would explain why I took time off so early in my attempted blogging “career” (cuz I’m making ZERO dollars from this venture). I wish I had some amazing trip that explained my absence from the blogosphere and provided a wealth of writing material for those who haven’t unfollowed me at this point.

I don’t.

Instead, I have this explanation: Life got in the way and is basically being a bitch at this point.

A lot has been going on, personally, and when life throws curveballs like it did with me, well, you have to take a step back and reevaluate what is more important and then you have to focus. I focused on treading water, as I feel like that is all I have been doing for the past almost two months. My legs and arms are way tired and I am so ready for a break.

And then another curveball was thrown, or what my friend Megan likes to say, I got handed a plot twist. THIS plot twist has put us out of our rental house-water damage from leaky pipes in the wall + summer heat and zero ventilation = MOLD. I found all of this out less than a week ago. Now, we are in the process of packing up our home where we have lived for almost two years, getting items professionally cleaned, and we are moving back in with my parents. Well,my kids and I are, at least. Husband is staying with his family who live close to my parents. There is just not a lot of room and we are trying to make it all fit as best we can. Now I get to try and find a new home for us. And then my kids and school…ugh. Don’t even get me started on that.

It’s slightly overwhelming. I can’t even begin to count the number of times I have wanted to throw my hands up and just scream “FUCK IT” and go eat ice cream and watch tv and play on Facebook or get sucked into a reddit hole. I’m playing a game of which I don’t know the rules and when I think I have something figured out, the rules change! But that’s life, right? Right?!?!

I’ve missed writing, though. And I hope to post more regularly after this weekend is through. So wish me luck with the move and I’ll see y’all next week.

Til then, duckies.

 

 

Time Marches On

“How did it get so late so soon? It’s night before it’s afternoon. December is here before it’s June. My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?”
― Dr. Seuss

Tomorrow is the last day of school for all three of my kids. When school starts again, I will have two kids in middle school and one in high school. It is really hard to believe that in just 7 short years, my youngest will be graduating high school.

7. Short. Years.

I say short years because as I get older, it seems that time passes more quickly. I used to think that my parents were messing with me about time. They would always warn me to enjoy my childhood, because once you are older, time seems to pass more quickly. I never believed them. I would roll my eyes once their backs were turned and tell myself they had no clue.  As a child, growing up seemed to take forever. My parents had no idea what they were saying… growing up was what life was all about, right?  I was sure, at age 5, that I would never make it to age 10. Once 10 was reached, 13 was the newest goal. And then 16…18…21. But once my children were born, my concept of time changed. It felt as though I would blink and they would have reached a new milestone, a new birthday, a new shoe size. I began to realize the wisdom my parents shared with me was no longer wasted wisdom. I understood.

Growing up was just a small part of my journey in this life. As an adult, though, it is easy to lose perspective on how growing up and time is viewed, depending on age. I find myself saying the same things my parents said to me to my own children…or any young person for that matter…and the look they give me is the same look, I am sure, I gave my parents. I find myself waking up and realizing the year is almost half way over. I am this close to having a 16 year old, my middle child is 6 months away from being 13, my youngest is already being mistaken for a teenager. Time is flying and I didn’t even realize I bought a ticket for this flight but here I am, strapped in and stuck and wondering how I can make it slow down.

I don’t know how to slow down time. I don’t know how to stop children from getting older so I can enjoy them a little longer. I don’t know where the pause button is so I can stop and take a breath. I do know how to hug my kids. I know how to take pictures and videos. I know how to make sure they are loved. I know how to tell them how precious they are to me. And I know how to step back and let them grow and experience and mature. Because that is what my job is now. To help them grow, to learn how to live, to experience life in all its wonder. And to be there for them when life gets hard to hold them, comfort them, and bolster them so they can get up and go back to living, experiencing, growing.

So, here I sit, watching as time marches on.  I wouldn’t miss this experience for anything.

“Sometimes I feel like if you just watch things, just sit still and let the world exist in front of you – sometimes I swear that just for a second time freezes and the world pauses in its tilt. Just for a second. And if you somehow found a way to live in that second, then you would live forever.”
― Lauren Oliver, Pandemonium

Praise Nature and Pass the Technology

“I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery—air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, “This is what it is to be happy.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

The weekend was pleasant enough, but Sunday was the best day by far. The day was filled with friends, simple entertainment, and nature.

Nature is my church. Nature is where my heart and spirit soar free, flying through the fresh air, dancing in and out through the foliage, splashing in the rushing waters of the rivers and lakes, dashing through the warm fingers of sunlight and the cool shadows of the leaves and trees. Nature is my zen, my happy place, my nirvana. It is in nature that I worship. We spent hours at the park, scrabbling around near the river, walking the paths near the mill, enjoying each other’s company. It was easy to forget the call of the world beyond. It was easy to drown out the unpleasantness from the previous week, letting go of all of the cares of the world and just simply BE.

I did things that frightened me. Not that they were dangerous or risky, unless you call falling in cool water on a hot day a risk. I’m not young anymore. My abilities to balance aren’t what they used to be. We walked an old rock wall near an old mill whose site was turned into a park. (That’s me in the front) I had to have great balance and the butterflies in my stomach were immensely busy fluttering, but I swallowed my fears and walked the wall. And then another. But that time, my husband held my hand, to reassure himself as well as me that I was safe, secure, and looked after.

balancing

This photo was taken by a friend. I’m in the front.

I took pictures of the old train trestle and tracks.

We enjoyed the interesting and colorful urban art that was on the cement stanchions and walls.

I saw my kids run and play and climb and be kids. We had a good time, a good day, and we plan on going back and doing more of the same with other added activities, like kayaking and maybe even a picnic.

Other than the use of my phone to take the pictures, I didn’t post to facebook. I didn’t tweet my photos. I recorded the memories, as I should, and put my phone back in my pocket to enjoy the moment. This time was too precious to miss.

My husband often says, when he is angry and impatient with a business, his time is precious. Truth be told, all of our time is precious. No one’s time is less costly than anothers. And the time we miss with our family and friends, the time we give to facebook and instagram and our phones and texting and tweeting…all of that time is time we will never get back. Technology has become a time-suck, a sneaky villain that wriggles in under the guise of helpfulness and takes bites out of our lives that we barely pay attention to, all the while complaining that there isn’t enough time in the day to do A, B, and C. Yet, the irony is if we paid half as much attention to what we really need to do as we do to our phones and facebook and technology, then we would probably get everything we need to do done.

I still love technology, don’t get me wrong. I love my phone, my tablet, my laptop. They all serve their purposes quite well. They keep me in contact with my friends, family, and coworkers. They help me to stay abreast of news. They entertain me when I am sick in bed, having insomnia, or stuck watching a tv show picked by my kids that makes me want to shove pencils in my eyes. But I am seeing more and more a need to take a step back from it so I can get back to what really matters in life. Because the less attention I pay to the time I spend with technology, the more I am giving up time with friends and loved ones. I have to feed what is important. I have to know when enough technology is enough.

Family is important.

Friends are important.

Worshiping nature is important.

Technology can wait.

“…and then, I have nature and art and poetry, and if that is not enough, what is enough?”
― Vincent van Gogh

Life Gets In The Way of Good Intentions

“Know the true value of time; snatch, seize, and enjoy every moment of it. No idleness, no laziness, no procrastination: never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.” Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

Yesterday was a complete cluster-fuck. I had zero time to carve out for blogging, my daughter had her end of the year chorus concert, work was I N S A N E…I am still exhausted. BUT, Everything I needed to complete for work was done. I met my deadlines.

I had every intention of hammering out a blog for my post a day challenge. I had every intention of writing some well thought out, meaningful, insightful piece and I just couldn’t. I didn’t have the time. I didn’t have the energy. I didn’t have the words to properly convey everything I wanted to, despite having this window open and staring at me during my teeny tiny moments of freedom I did manage to sneak.

An empty page. A frazzled brain. That is all I accomplished with my blog yesterday. I am okay with that, though. I’m a mom. An office manager. A wife. An assistant, a shipping coordinator, and event planner and so many other things. And yesterday, I did all of those things. At once. My busy life got in the way of my good intentions. Even after my day was almost complete, I still had to let personal things slide because the day was just too short to try and accomplish anything else. I fell into bed, wiped out, put on something soothing to listen to  so I could sleep while my husband watched Mountain Men and drifted off into his own needed rest. It was just one of those days.

Yesterday I did manage to reconnect with a friend I haven’t spoken to in a while. We made plans to try and get together for lunch at some point. She had reached out through Facebook, stating she had been a bad friend because of her absence in my life. I told her life gets in the way. And from there we made plans. But it is true. Life gets in the way. We get so caught up in our own shit, so consumed by it that we walk around, missing out on the people and the crazy, chaotic, wonderful things that surround us. We lose ourselves in the mire of everyday normality, forgetting that variety and experiences are the spice of life and in order to do that, we have to actually LIVE. We have to stop the zombie-esque shuffle from one task to the next and actually get out of our comfort zone and experience new things, meet new people, feel new emotions. We have to start living intentionally and making the most of what we have.

So, step by step, I am going to start to try living intentionally. This is not a “Resolution”, but merely an attempt at being more present in my own life. This will lead to me being more present in others lives, ie kids, husband, friends.

Life goals.

The struggle is real.

“Intentional living is the art of making our own choices before others’ choices make us.”
― Richie Norton