It's late on a Tuesday night and I find myself with a restless general anxiety in my stomach... a strange hunger for growth suddenly... an uncomfortable sense of things I should begin doing, small habits I've not been doing for a long time. I'm not sure why now, why here... But I'm sitting with it. I'm googling ideas. I'm jotting notes down as they fly into my head, a stack of red post-its in front of me with lists of photo clients, website templates, business growth ideas...

While this weird energy is mostly work-related tonight, it is reopening up thoughts about my life as a whole and what I want to work on when my youngest heads to kindergarten in the fall. I have so many ideas and plans and hopes for that coming day-- a new era in my life after 14 years of having at least one child at home with me. 

Forgive the randomness of the following list... there is no focus, there is no order. It's just a set of things that I'm jotting down here so I can settle them down and not carry them to bed with me.

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I want to practice intentional screen-free time, to see what happens. In my head. In my home. In my heart. I don't know how this will look... if it will be daily for a set time each day, or once a week for a whole day... I don't know. I just know I want to try. I want to clear the noise and invite disquiet and restlessness to see what happens after it. 

I want to write. Not anything formal or themed... I just want to sit down and let words out again, in an open-ended way. Losing the blogging habit, allowing the Instagram captions to count as a skeletal substitute... It's not enough, and I think I've lost something. And while my social-emotional needs have been vastly cared-for via Marco Polo-- it has absolutely been a stand-in talk therapy for me for the last few years-- I think I lean on it more for processing, and again, I think something is lost when I don't sit with things alone, inside myself, and write it out. I want to sit and write more. 

I might be ready, finally, to lean back into my business. To work on a website. To increase my offerings AND my pricing. To blog my clients in a regular way to boost my online presence. To run a giveaway. To create and USE contracts and auto-reminders and schedulers. I have been vastly reluctant to do any of this for YEARS now. Maybe I'm ready finally. 

I have been okay. So so okay. Learning about rest and release and self-acceptance for the last few years. Watching myself NOT reach, not strive... But also not need to. Letting some things go and then being okay with that. There has been growth here, even when it feels like nothing much is happening. 

And as always, there has been observation and appreciation. I think those are two of my greatest gifts. Even without ambition and worldly success, I can sit in most moments and observe and appreciate. And that is a beautiful thing... and no small thing. 

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So anyway. That's me, July 2022, on a late Tuesday night. More to come in the coming weeks, maybe.

Pandemic Life: Checking In With a Brain Dump

 Sunday, April 18. Wait, I think it's April 19. It's DEFINITELY Sunday... We mark the week with a home church session on Sundays, so I know I have that part right. But the rest of it-- actual dates, actual days in stay-at-home isolation.... Those are fuzzier. Pretty sure it's the 19th. And that we are on Day 27. Or Day 38. 

I count the first day of this "new normal"-- the pandemic crisis of 2020, Coronavirus/COVID-19-- for our family as Friday, March 13. It was the day after they closed Disneyland and major league baseball plans and March Madness and our church sent an email in the evening temporarily suspending all church gatherings and meetings. March 13, the Friday that was supposed to begin my kids' spring break. But while my kids were home because it was on the calendar, many many other districts around the nation were abruptly calling off school for their students that same day, for at least the next few weeks. 

By the Tuesday of the next week, while we tried to chill in a spring-break-y way while staying at home (the zoo had announced it's temporary closure the day before, and every other place for local outings were following suit), our own school district had announced that it would remain closed after spring break, moving to an "alternative learning plan" starting March 26 and going until April 3 (for the moment, but with a likelihood of extending well past that). On Saturday, March 21, the official announcement for the city and county of St. Louis came that a formal "stay-at-home" order would be issued beginning Monday, March 23rd-- an order that closed restaurants, theaters, gyms, and other "non-essential" businesses and strongly restricted other comings and goings for the population of our area. 

On the day we would've been putting our kids back on the bus for school, Monday, March 23,  instead we all hunkered down for the long haul. Joe began to work from home, I ran to the grocery store yet again to continue stocking up on pantry essentials that could help us stay home with minimal need to run out for more food/supplies as days went by... and I began a gentle but structured daily routine for myself and for the kids that would get us moving each morning and help us break out of the spring break "vacation mode" we'd been in the entire strange week before. No all-day pajamas. Getting dressed, even if it was just in another set of comfy clothes, helped mark the beginning of the "work/school" day. For me, a little bit of makeup, some earrings, and time to write in my morning pages before beginning the day helped a great deal with my mental preparation for the ongoing work of having my entire family at home with me all day long for the foreseeable future. 

And so we began this strange new normal. Our weekday routine has been as follows (with plenty of wiggle room to modify, skip, change and extend any of it as needed):

7:45-8:30  Everybody up and breakfasted and dressed by 8:30. Each can go at their own pace, as long as we're all ready to go by 8:30.

8:30-9  Morning walk. Joe is working in his guest room "office" upstairs by now, so this is just me and the kids. We often stroll around the pond in our neighborhood, but sometimes change it up and go if other directions.  

9-9:30 Settle around the dining room table to write a letter or a journal entry. Planner planning for Noah and I sometimes. 

9:30-10:30 School Time, with Noah, Lucy and Quinn each taking turns breaking away for 20 minutes of piano practice. This is usually Chromebook schooling... zoom meetings and checking new assignments; self-led work while I nudge and nag and help out as needed. Lucy has some notebook writing she needs to do, and is usually better at it in the morning versus the afternoon school hour. (It helps to get Larkin watching cartoons at this time, or she'll run away to Dad's "office" and pester him a little. Joe has been magnificently patient during these interruptions.)

10:30-11 Group art or music (we've managed this maybe three times total in the last three weeks.  More often than not, it becomes an "overflow" worktime and a brain break for mama. Oops.)


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July 13, 2020 11:12 pm

Yeah, I never finished that one. And then it was summer. And here we are, still in a Pandemic. Living through what continues to be a historical year.... historically awful, mostly. 

But we're together. My little clan is together. A little more annoyed with each other as days go on, but still so so close. So connected. And really very content. We are lucky--- we are not in a scary place with jobs or money. We are all healthy. We have a house that we fit in, with a big backyard and a trashy 2020 inflatable pool, and all kinds of shows and movies we can stream,  and plenty of food and books and puzzles.... And if I'm mostly REALLLLLY lazy this summer-- sleeping in and re-reading old YA paranormal/dystopian novels and fixating on puzzle after puzzle if I'm not napping or playing the freaking Cat Game on my phone-- I'm also nudging my kids to practice the piano, to read more, and to make art. To help me with my tomatoes, basil and zinnias. To be kind to each other. So in some ways, they are being nudged in the areas that matter most to me. 

It's gonna be okay. And even if the world is falling apart around us-- so much divisiveness amid the actual threat of a crazy and unpredictable virus-- we're okay. 

So there. An old post, not totally wasted and tossed aside, with a current addendum, and the cute "social distancing" porch photos my friend Laura took of our family in May. We all picked something that represented this weird pandemic life of ours, and I LOVE the results. capturing history right here. 
Noah: science and a mask
Joe: working on his guitar skillz
Me: overalls and showing off our toilet paper abundance
Quinn: blankie and red panda
Lucy: scarf and peacock
Larkin: butterfly wings and tiara and TOTAL 3-year-old attitude

And that's it for now. Perhaps I'll write a post or two more in 2020..... Perhaps.