We’re in the last stretch of summer now. I just came inside from picking up acorns in our backyard. It’s one of those things that doesn’t define my life but it shapes it. There are these repeating things that shape the course of our lives. We have a lot of trees and I love that but like everything there is another side. All the trees mean that we constantly have dead wood falling in our yard after storms, we have acorns all over the yard every year and we have so many leaves to clear up in the fall. It doesn’t even matter if you don’t have acorns and leaves. Maybe you live in a place where it snows a lot and you have to spend time shoveling or snowblowing and dealing with everything that comes along with that. But these things that repeat that we probably don’t enjoy doing affect the course of our lives. They’re like the curb on the side of the road. You don’t have to follow the path that the curb creates but if you don’t you’ll pay a price. A flat tire or maybe a ticket when you hop that curb. I don’t want to pick up acorns or clean up leaves but I spend hours and hours doing it every year. I don’t have a lot of control over this but I have some control over my mindset and how I deal with the feeling of not wanting to do it but having to do it. Do you drive with road rage or do you calmly navigate your drive to work? I don’t want to be a roadrager. I want to have a chill drive. So, maybe I need to leave a few minutes earlier than I’d like to but then I’m just cruising. I’m not the guy yelling, speeding and weaving in & out of traffic. When you’re roadraging all you see is your rage and the obstacles in front of you. You miss seeing the deer grazing on the side of the road. The acorns and leaves are the curbs that create the route I take through part of the year but I get to decide how I drive the route.
Kids are definitely the worst part about parenting.
Looking inward is necessary to grow but looking outward is necessary to live.
The world continues to be on fire this summer. Literally and figuratively. I completely understand that we all don’t and won’t see everything the same way but I completely don’t understand why/how people support a “leader” who is telling them that the goal is to take away their rights, take away control of their own bodies, and use methods like censorship to control what they think.
Sometimes it’s hard to enjoy the downtime. And sometimes it’s hard to find the downtime.
This is probably the trick to a good life all the time but it seems particularly difficult to sort out in middle age: BALANCE. There are so many things we have to do. And so much of our time is already accounted for with work, appointments and obligations with/for kids. Then we have to fit in taking care of our health, which can end up feeling like another have to do instead of a want to do. But damn, we’ve gotta fit in lazy time and fun time and play time too! We’re not really living if we aren’t playing and having fun. Balance is hard.