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Do spinning wheels ever really go anywhere?


Two days ago I sat across from the love of my life and expressed to him my frustrations with attempting to prioritize my passions during this glorious, much- deserved, and long-awaited summer break.  As a teacher for the past few years I have experienced the wonder of summer in a whole new manner than when I was a kid. Those childhood summer breaks were filled with church camp, swimming, and sleeping late. These days I sleep until just after dawn, build something, write something, or spend the afternoon with my nieces and nephew. It’s definitely an age-appropriate change, but change nonetheless.

This summer, particularly, I’ve been plagued with the inability to sort through my thoughts and projects in a way that would make sense; a way that would lend themselves to their level of importance in my head. This battle is impossible because the level of importance continues to fluctuate with my moods, level of inspiration, supplies available, or time. I keep this running list of things I want to do; things I want to accomplish and I check it off from time to time. The trouble with all this time on my hands is there are no deadlines, no schedule to keep that budgets my time for me. I wake up and want to blog about the project I built the night before, but that project led me to another idea and if I waste time blogging about it then I won’t have the time to actually do the next project I thought about doing. Both of those activities end up taking a backseat to the Houston Children’s Museum outing I want to take with my nieces and nephew. I can’t go there because I have two projects and a blog to do. Therefore, instead of completing the projects, or blogging, or experiencing the afternoon at a museum I end up cycling through all my reasons a dozen times and accomplishing nothing at all.

Mikey so patiently listened to me drone while we enjoyed nachos and chicken soup. He let me say everything I wanted; agreed and nodded at the appropriate times, or interjected the necessary nod or eyebrow raise. When I finally took a breath he said, “I know exactly where you are. All you have to do is relax and what you actually love to do and find most important will surface to the top.” He went on to remind me how we are in transition right now and he fully expected me to become frustrated at some point. Frankly, I’m not always sure exactly how I feel about him knowing me so well. Some days I love it; his insight makes me feel normal. Other days it’s infuriating.

The truth is that he’s perfectly accurate. I have all these interests: blogging/writing, building/creating, painting, being an aunt. The interesting thing is that with all those passions, desires, interests, whatever you want to call them – the only time my brain slows down and the world stops spinning is when I’m creating something new. Maybe Mikey was right – all I have to do is relax. 

Comments

  1. Kimber JJuly 6, 2012 at 10:11 PM

    Of course Mikey was right! He's always right!

    -Anonymous

    ReplyDelete

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