It’s July! I made it through a winter full of power outages and drudgery, and survived a spring season of house hunting and writing the last few chapters of Hawk’s Heart (Stranger Creatures book 5). Finishing that story really hurt my brain, until I finally, finally envisioned the ending, which felt just right. With a major project completed and the search for a house done, I’ve been sitting down at the computer, ready to plan my next writing projects and thinking about all the other things that need to be done, not to mention all the minutiae of house maintenance and cooking. The lists of things to do felt like an endless load of weight piling up in front of me, and I lost all energy and motivation.
Coffee and dark chocolate helped
restore my energy and gave me some extra to store away, but the motivation to
do any meaningful work or make any real choices? That stayed gone much like my short-lived
love of waterfall cardigans and candy circus peanuts. Habits created by having
to juggle a fair amount of hours at work while in college and then, the
experience of raising children and everything that entails, has taught me that
every minute must be used wisely or I will drown in a sea of tasks that require
my attention. As the children have grown, I find myself still trying to do
every single thing I think needs doing to keep the imaginary sea of entropy at
bay. Summertime seems to be when I catch myself in this pattern of unnecessary overwork
and overwhelm.
Maybe it’s the sunshine and lovely
weather. Maybe the ocean is calling me through my seashell collection. Anne
Morrow Lindbergh’s book Gift from the Sea was the inspiration for the
sea shells that I have displayed in different places throughout my house. I intentionally
left them out so they could become breadcrumbs that would lead me to remember
to take some time for myself every now and then. Mostly, I just see the shells
without really seeing them. Sometimes, though, could be the shells or
the sunlight beckoning from the crack in my blinds, something snaps me out of
my ultra-efficiency mode.
Whether it’s a staycation or
traveling, or even short weekend trips, taking some time off always renews my
desire to delegate every chore possible and to let the little things go for a
while, maybe even completely. Habits are hard to break but the peace and the
time for reflection regenerates a part of myself that I tend to neglect. With
each reminder, I go further into the journey of finding what matters versus
what is the kind of background noise that we, as humans, have been trained to
fear and judge others about. Slightly messy houses, chipped manicures, simple,
unglamorous dinners that don’t involve a ton of prep work and clean up, and
souls that light up like flowers in the sun- that’s what summers are for. So, I’m
taking a break and telling myself that it’s alright. This summer, I won’t get
as much work done as far as actual words on paper, but the ideas are buried
deep in the garden, growing into something better and brighter than they would
have become if I had kept slogging through a constant routine of multitasking and
mopping up messes.
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