Had lunch yesterday with a great good friend, and at one point we started talking about taking down time, settling into stillness for a while.
My mind raced across all the different plates I have spinning in the air, between parenting a high-needs kid and keeping the marriage alive and coping with chronic illness and a shoulder injury ... and the paying job, which is basically just nuts at this time of year.
And the summer is already planned to the hilt. Vacation with extended family, vacation with our little nuclear family, an article to write, other articles and a book to revise and send off again, lectures and conference presentations to whip into article shape. And if I finish all that, I want to write a book proposal and write a short piece for Notes and Queries. In other words, there's no way it's all going to get done.
On top of all that, I have a class scheduled, though it's now looking like it probably won't make enrollment, which is good given all the writing I want to do, but not so good for the bottom line.
So when she asked me if I could/would take some down time... first I laughed, then I choked back a sob, the kind where you wonder if you start crying, if it would ever stop. And then we went to Tompkins Square Park and sat for a few minutes, and as we simply sat on a bench under a tree, the idea started to seem less ludicrous.
Need to work on that. Stillness. Today, not tomorrow.
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Oh, yes. It has to come FIRST. Because that's where you get the strength to do everything else. Or at least laugh at the idea of doing everything else.
ReplyDeleteDo it.