Wednesday, November 19, 2014

my days are okay.

So for some reason, I just have this constant anxiety that I'm not living a beautiful wholesome life every minute of the day. I live most of my life like assuming that I am falling far short of the habits of a virtuous thinker/wife/Christian/mom/whatever else I am, and then spending a lot of energy trying to plan how I can do better. For some reason tonight, when I was reading a blog about unschooling (an annoying term that means way too many things to be helpful,) a light flashed in my mind, or the winds changed or something. I realized that I do what I want to do and what I can do and most of this stuff is totally fine.

Just as I wrote that, my husband, out of nowhere, looked at me and said, in a surfer voice, "I think you need to squarely confront Heidegger." Shut up, that's not what this post is about!

Here are the things I usually do, basically in order.


  • Wake up and wrassle around in bed with my baby in an affectionate manner; change his diaper etc
  • Stare off into space and think about what's going to happen today while I smell Matt's coffee and wait for him to be done translating Plato or whatever he does so that I can...
  • Hold the cooing baby while Matt says prayers and reads the Bible
  • Tidy the kitchen and make breakfast and prep for later meals and make bread
  • Put the baby down for a nap
  • Sometimes nap with the baby, sometimes check in with our guy upstairs to talk about work or help him with computer stuff, sometimes make my coffee (which takes a long time because we use the Melitta pour over method) and do work (which is now the fun job of writing!), or drink coffee and read things on the internet or write in my blog or write emails
  • Go on a long walk with Matt and the baby
  • Make and eat lunch
  • Attend to grownup crap if I have to, like things where you have to look at the calendar and maybe get out the folder of boring documents and sigh because it's not really that convenient to do everything online
  • More working or reading stuff on the internet or petty household concerns while baby naps, playing with him as much as I can when he's not napping
  • Sometimes I go to the store and usually have fun; I drive to Trader Joe's and listen to NPR or church music or nothing, and I walk about a mile each way to the organic grocery store
  • Give the baby a bath (his favorite bathtime game right now is called "Clutching my junk and splashing disastrously with the other hand") and say night time prayers with him (Matt is usually at school)
  • Put him to bed and fret about whether I should let him cry or not
  • Read a book or blogs or write in my journal about what the baby's up to
  • Throughout the day, talking on the phone and texting with my sister-in-law (who was my friend before I met Matt and has a two year old,) my BFF (in whose grandpa's house we live,) and a good friend from college who came back into my life when she got pregnant (and had a baby last month!)


So what else do I think I should be doing? Iconography is not happening right now, I have accepted that. I could read more, but why should I read more than I feel like reading right now? I guess the one thing that annoys me is how much time I spend looking at the iPad. I use it for work, but you know how life is these days. All your crap is on the computer. What time is the store open? When are my library books due? How far is it to Maine from here again? Is there a liturgy on such and such a day? How do you make banana bread that isn't weird Sally Fallon bread? Etc. But I can't really help that. I don't rush to the computer for every single thing. It's ok.

Now I look at the clock and see that it is 11:57 and I am sure that the virtuous thing to do is go to bed, and I think I will. But I feel pretty good about what happened between 7 am and now.

2 comments:

  1. It seems to me you are spending your time loving and serving your family. What could be sweeter?

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    Replies
    1. That was sort of my revelation! I'm not sure why it took me so long to figure that out. Thanks. :)

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