Late September Musings

How in the heck is it late September? Life has been a whirlwind. I'm juggling, floundering, living, flourishing, surviving. It's crazy, beautiful chaos and I'm consistently overwhelmed on even the best days. Sometimes it feels like I'm leveling up and that I've totally got this. Sometimes it feels like it's all too much.

The silver lining (realization #53 of my forties: my toxic trait is that I am an aggressive seeker of silver linings) is a major shift in perspective this year. 

I have to choose exactly where I want to spend my time. I am setting boundaries with myself (as a serial people pleaser) - why am I spending time on this? Does this need to happen? Does it make our lives better? Does it make me happy or fulfilled? Does it make our family happy? Does this strengthen our family or community? Am I sharing this for myself and memories, or is it to stroke my own ego? Can I put this off? Let this go? Am I really letting someone down or is it no longer measuring myself by the expectations of others? How do I want to spend these little bits of precious time?

These questions have led us to... a messier house (but not so messy that it stresses me out). A dirty car. A mulch pile that is still sitting in the driveway. Laundry that doesn't always get put away. A neglected section of my yard that desperately needs weeding. Neglected craft kits bought with good intentions. A garage that still needs to be cleaned out. A basement that needs to be organized. But also... plenty of flowers in the garden and backyard. More friends over. More family visits. More play dates and trips to the pool and swims in the backyard and family bike rides and hikes and day trips and core memories. 

I am trying to carve out bits for myself, otherwise I would have gone batty months ago. All summer I made sure to take the time to enjoy the backyard pool more and not just clean it. I actually tried to swim or relax on my favorite float with headphones. We swam in the ocean, hiked to waterfalls, saw the rings of Saturn and the super moon from our telescope, watched the Perseides meteor shower from the mountains, floated down the Delaware River. Flowers and gardening are my big happy and I pick bouquets that fill our house until frost. I drink lavender cold brew, draw on my iPad or sketchbook, ride my bike, walk the dog, read plenty of books and try to meditate a few times a week. My goal is to spark joy, celebrate milestones and little things. Big adventures and small ones. Find the silver linings. 

And time is in short supply. Having two very active boys in multiple year-round sports is... a lot. It's good for them for a million reasons, it's fun, and we support whatever they want to do. I'm fully immersed in this season of life because I want to be here for it, I want to enjoy it. I know now that this is as fleeting as the early years which felt so endless at the time and are now distant specks in the rearview. The games and meets, the practices, the driving, the volunteer hours at their schools, the fun outings, family time and friend time and everything - it all takes up pieces of a finite amount of time. 

In April, May, June we had a completely insane schedule of double taekwondo and double baseball chaos, plus birthday season and general end-of-year craziness. June and July were packed with trying to juggle camps, swim team, swim lessons and taekwondo. In August camps wrapped up, we were grieving the loss of Mike's dad, we went away to the mountains in New York state, we prepped Oliver for middle school. September has been a lot of back-to-school chaos, both boys in soccer and taekwondo and Oliver is doing the middle school cross country team. It's A LOT. However, for Oliver this is his year of new sports... swim, cross country, wrestling, fencing, track and field... because we fell into the trap of "do what we've always done" in athletics (after a couple of failed attempts at new sports). We realized it's time to try some new things and explore new opportunities before he's locked out due to lack of experience. So this year is Oliver's journey to discover what else is out there, what sports he also enjoys. So far he loves swimming and he loves running... next year is going to be full of tough choices! 

As for my choices and this space, I know I've been posting less while flying too fast through my life. There have been so many distractions, and it's easy to overlook what I'm doing here, but the truth is I still like it. Writing and taking photos takes up precious time, but I'm looking at this blog like a journal. In the long run it's fulfilling to have posts to look back on. Re-reading some of my old content has brought me lot of joy. So I'm going to try to make a bit more effort in this space again (hopefully), I want to choose to come here more often.