Is there a word or term for being busy by purposefully making oneself Not Busy? Well, that’s what I’ve been up to lately. Trying hard to stay unbusy. Busy-free. Busyless?
What.
Mostly, that means spending time with my family and avoiding over-committing. That means unplugging from social media and reading more. That means—dare I say it—mindfulness. I’ve been taking stock at what fills my days and where I expend emotional energy. Don’t get me wrong, I still have a lot on my plate. By nature of working full-time out of the home and raising four kiddos, my days are filled. But when I have the opportunity to make a choice to how I spend my time and on what I spend my energy, I’ve had to do some soul-searching.
Something I’ve noticed during my time in therapy and in reflective prayer, I tend to cope by withdrawing. I put my headphones in and shut down. So it takes conscious effort and daily practice to lean into the discomfort, the messiness, the chaos. But it’s been fruitful. It’s been joy-filled.
Have I been overwhelmed by this new-found focus? Yes. Have I been happy every minute of it? Nope. But it’s yielded something good. And I’m looking forward to exploring this more.
And what does this all look like in practice? Well, I’ll show ya.
For Halloween this year, we trick-or-treated in our neighborhood. For the first time in YEARS, the neighborhood organized trick-or-treating for the residents. We got together with some other families and walked and wagoned and scootered our way throughout the neighborhood and got some goodies. We did not trick-or-treat last year, so the joy on our kids’ faces was something to behold.
Emma and I went to see the Oakland Ballet’s production of Luna Mexicana which was fantastic. The production highlighted multiple aspects of Mexican and indigenous cultures and we were mesmerized. Emma loved going to her first professional ballet performance and had requested to see more performances. I’m going to look into booking tickets for the SF Ballet Nutcracker. Prayers that the tickets are reasonably priced.
Luca has been stinking adorable. We’ve been enjoying his blossoming personality, his curiosity, and his infectious smile. He took his first steps a couple of weeks ago. And his new favorite activities include pulling books off the shelf to “read”, playing in the kid kitchen, and getting stuck in precarious places. He fascinates me and I just love to follow him around in the evenings watching what he gets up to.
Emma’s Island Dance performance. She’s the cutie with the light pink shirt. She’s so beautiful, I can’t stand it.
The kids are enjoying school and after school activities. This semester, Emma took Island Dance and Directed Drawing classes and Henry took Soccer and Carpentry classes. They looked forward to them each session and I can’t tell you how much I’ve appreciated the kids being back in the classroom and back being able to do activities.
Henry especially has bloomed these past few months. He has done incredibly transitioning to Kindergarten. I’ve been worried about certain things for him and his development, but I’m grateful that he’s been thriving in Kindergarten. He also reminds us that we need to read every night because “that’s what my teacher says”. I just love it. Emma has also blossomed into quite a reader. Something “clicked” this year and she’s been eating up chapter books. We’ve had to make runs to the library but I just can’t keep up with how fast she eats through those books. The reader in me is so proud. *sniff*
We are heading out of town for Thanksgiving so we decided to put our tree up now so that we can enjoy our Christmas and Advent decor as soon as we return from our trip. I put up the tree and stockings while they were at school this week and when they got home, they completely lit up seeing the decorations. It filled my heart with so much joy. We had to leave off the ornaments towards the bottom of the tree because little Luca is a curious boy and already tried to eat them. Oh 11-month-olds. Speaking of 11 months, Luca is officially 11-months-old today. I’ll post his little update over on my Instagram later today.
Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours.