The other day someone remarked that I seem to organise my day so that I have no time to think and no time for myself. I was a little taken aback by this and decided to look into her statement.
I sat and thought about what my day entails, and it goes as follows:
6.45 Alarm goes off and I wake and check facebook (yes really! Terrible thing and I know I should stop)
6.50 Say good morning to my boys and hop in the shower, listening to the hullabaloo from the boys bedroom as they get themselves sorted out.
7.15 Off out with dog (name is Wellington, a lovely soft lump of a Golden Retreiver) for a 20 minute walk
7.35 Breakfast, by this time the boys have helped themselves to breakfast and my eldest has made his packed lunch
7.45 Help youngest make his packed lunch and wash up the dishes
8:00 Brush my teeth and supervise my youngest with his teeth
8.15 Shoes, and coats on and we’re all off out of the door, boys walk to school and I walk to work. (Good aren’t we!)
Phew, so far so busy.
8.30 Arrive at work, turn the computer on, whilst computer wakes up I collect my morning coffee, made by the lovely Dan in computing.
13:00 Down tools to walk home and take the very patient Wellington out for a good bomb.
13:45 Sit down at my work desk at home, power up computer and get back to work. Oh I forgot, I eat my lunch too.
14:50 Walk to school to collect boys
15:15 Back at the computer for the final two hours of the “working” day
Hmmm… I seem to do rather a lot of sitting!
17:00 “Work” day is over
17:05 Start cooking supper for us all. Sometimes it’s a new recipe, other times it is out of the freezer (especially if it is a Beaver or Cub night)
18:00 Eat supper
18:30 Wash up, boys dry and clear the table
18:45 Oh, a small window of time to sit down – oh no there is washing / sweeping / hoovering / sewing of badges to to deal with…
19:30 Bedtime for the youngest
Phew, one down, one to go. Oh goodness I have a another window of relax time, and generally I do actually relax for a little time.
20:30 Eldest bedtime
21:00 Wow! It’s now 9pm and the house is quiet. And relax
22:00 Feed cat, toilet dog and off to bed to read for 20 minutes before turning in.
Hmmmm…it would seem from this that I have around a little over 2 hours to myself for down time. What do I do in the downtime you ask? Well it can be catching up with my favourite shows, reading a good book – I’m currently rather interested in the Russian Revolution at the moment – playing on my newly acquired tablet, or perhaps knitting – I seem to have re-found my interest in this particular hobby.
Looking at this hectic (and I don’t doubt it’s other Mum’s timetable too) schedule of “things” I spend my time doing I ask myself, do I purposely pack my day full of stuff to avoid having time to myself? Or do I simply pack my day with stuff that frankly just needs doing?
Is the culture of being busy good for us? Are we able to be ourselves whilst we fly around doing all the things that just need doing? Are we able to fulfill our own needs, or are we too busy fulfilling the needs of those around us? When you have children, of course they need your help, your guidance, they need you to do things for them or show them how to do things for themselves, but do we need to lose ourselves in the process?
Sometimes I just wish that the world would stop, just for a moment, just stop so that I could take a breath, so that I could step out of this hectic lifestyle i seem to have fashioned for myself. Perhaps though life shouldn’t be quite so busy, quite so hectic. Perhaps if I made a life for myself that was slower I wouldn’t feel this need to stop the world.
I wonder how many people running around in their busy lives want the world to stop for just a moment.
But it isn’t the world that needs to stop.
It’s us.
