Wasting Time

It's a chilly morning, mid-February.  I'm on my couch in my silky pajama pants and a fraying hoodie while my kids, dressed about the same, but with shoes, are running around in the yard.  Snow was enough to keep them inside for a few weeks, but frozen mud?  They're undaunted.  If you can see the dirt, you can eat it.  That satisfies their requirements for a play-outside day.

I'm kidding!  Only one of them eats dirt.......and gets caught.

The baby just went down for her morning nap, which usually isn't a long one.  That means that I am now in my window of opportunity.  If I hurry, I can work out now.  If I really hurry, I can even shower before 2:00 this afternoon.  So, obviously, I'm here, instead, typing up a semi-coherent, irregular blog post.

?????????????

I should mention that, athletic ineptitude aside, I really do like to work out, when I can manage it.  The question marks make more sense if you know that.  And me sitting on the couch, typing this makes less.  But here I am.

Over the days of stay-at-home-parenting, I'm learning a lot about myself.  One of those things is that I'm either rather lazy, or not very good at managing time.  I prefer to believe the latter.  Something I miss from my former life - the one without children - is having clear tasks and expectations before me, and having someone to make sure that I do them, and to evaluate how I did.

Yes!  I miss having a boss!

Because with external criteria and external critics to define them, and to define me, I could take the very objective list of things I had done on a given day, and easily decide: I did well today.  I am efficient, productive, competent -- other days, not so much.  A big 'A' on my paper or a 'C+' on my exam allowed me to bypass the need for all this introspective evaluation.  This is how I did.  This is what kind of a student/employee/person I am.  See?  It says so right there in red sharpie.

Child-rearing is a different creature.  I have three small people to nurture, a house to maintain, and any number of tasks, defined and otherwise to accomplish with various, rarely established due dates - if any at all.  I'm learning some tricks to it, of course.  Some things can be sorted into check-lists and charts.  Some things can be scheduled and regulated, if I will take the time to mastermind that scheduling, regulating, sorting, listing and charting.

Time is something that I want desperately to catch and tame.  If I could just grapple that wily whatever-it-is to the ground, get onto its back and establish a good, white-knuckle grip, then maybe things would be different.  Maybe then I could dance to the zany music that has become my life, rather than always stumbling a step behind it.

I've begun to ask myself, when I have a free evening, 'what do you want?  All you need to do is decide what will make you happy.  You have the ability, the resources, even, yes, the time to make it happen, if only you will.  So what do you want?'  And my answer if always the same - I don't know.

*****

I should add a disclaimer here: this post is acting like kind of a downer.  I know that I come off as pessimistic more often than I actually am, and usually, I try to end with some redeeming perspective in my posts to counter that.  Today I'm not going to.  I'm just going to say that in the biggest, most important things, I am happy.  I know that.  Not for an instant do I regret the life I have chosen.  My little people are delightful and so much more, and you should see the things they're teaching me!  I have everything I need and everything I want, really.  The only thing I lack is me.  I want vibrancy, color in my life, and I know it's there.  It's all around me.  The only deficiency is my will, my ability to look up or reach out at just the right moment - there's that time thing again - to seize it.

Carpe diem - how cliche am I?  But many, even most cliches have their foundations rooted in more truth than we comprehend.  That's how they got to be so annoyingly well known.   That's how it is according to Caitlin, anyway.

Ahem.  My point is that I'm not sad right now.  I'm not wallowing in all the things and experiences I don't have.  I'm just sitting thoughtfully, even bemusedly on my couch, observing my life for a few moments, and gauging whether or not I still have time for that workout.