I've been too busy to think lately. Work has been madness
since late August, as the new year began and I started working with a new set
of responsibilities and challenges. L started a new job, and so our household
has been leaning into the chance for her to make a great first impression,
especially considering that she'll be on maternity leave soon. Alice has
started potty training and is copping new attitudes and new sets of vocabulary
-- today she came back from kiddie yoga and told us, in all seriousness,
"NAmaste" -- and all the while the new kid in L's belly becomes all
the more comprehensible. There is more to come.
I've realized, in the middle of all of this, that I
really miss a few things: reading, exercise, writing. I feel like a fat slob. I haven't been able to sink my teeth into a
book for a while. I'm dying for some new music. I recently retread John
Williams' Stoner, a novel I first read in 2006 and immediately adored. It
struck me as one of the most perfect, best novels I ever read, even with its
flaws. Reading it again it maintained
its power and inspired me as a writer, a feeling I haven't had in a while.
Throughout my adult life, there have been things that I
was so excited about -- I would shape my weeks by thinking about them,
anticipating, considering, and the afterwards, reflecting and hoping for the
next time. It stated with improv class,
then the gym, then hip hop, and then my writing class a few semesters ago. I
miss those things. Now I think about the time commitment and the things I would
miss -- time with Alice, family dinners, holding up my end of our domestic
bargain. I miss that casual selfishness that made early adulthood so exciting
and free.
So I'm trying to do something about it. I rejoined the
gym at work and I'm looking for classes. I'm trying to carve out more time to
be thoughtful and purposeful. But I still have that nagging fear, that this is
the time when we put childish things aside -- passions, exploration -- and
disappear into the daily routines that become the engine and the sum of our
days.
1 comment:
Stephen and I applaud your efforts to keep at it - the passions of your former life that is. Sitting on the other side of the great divide (Toddlerhood) I can tell you that in some ways this is a season that we parents end up putting our heads down and powering through to the other side of insanity. But it is a short season. So short I hardly know how we got here.. though that might be due to brain damage from lack of sleep. At any rate.. we are starting to get back to those things that inspired us a little bite at a time. I think if it's a priority in your life you won't let it go. This is meant to be an encouragement btw ;) One day you will see A running around in undies and you will realize you aren't watching every step she takes in case she sits on/stands over something that would be difficult to clean if peed on.. and you won't even know how you got there. It's a nice place to end up.
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