When J and I were together he would bristle when I would try to get us to schedule something for the weekend. My time is scheduled down to the minute every day at work, he’d practically beg, I just need my weekends to be open and unscheduled. UGH! But how will we ever DO anything if we don’t plan it? What I want to spend time doing will be different than yours so if we don’t coordinate, they’ll never align — MUST PLAN THINGS!
So, sometimes we did. And generally what happened was he was grateful that we had, though at the cost of cohabitation bliss.
AND, OH THE IRONY! I am now experiencing what I think he must have been, and I feel kinda badly for my insistence…
My relationship with the clock has somehow shifted with the start of this school year. Much of it has to do with the increase in my teaching and meeting hours. My planning and grading hours are diminished, which means more work at home, on weekends, in my own “free time.” Last year, there were entire stretches of school hours when I could sit and read a book for exploration of what we may do next. Now, I’m feeling like I’m lucky if I have time to pee.
This isn’t altogether accurate, but that is how it feels. And so, with my Action Partner, among the actions for the day that I text her each morning is, “GO OUTSIDE ALONE.”
Sometimes this helps, but strangely, even THIS feels like too much scheduling!
There are several people and events to coordinate in the upcoming weeks, and all I feel like doing is screaming. They’re important, necessary events, but I could absolutely say verbatim what J had said to me: My work days are scheduled to the minute, I just want time to do whatever the hell I want!
But, I know myself better. I really do. I know that given time to “do whatever I want” generally looks like doing very little, and not in the good, “release achieving” sense of it; more in the binge-watching, pajama-wearing, did I brush my teeth today sense of it!
All things in moderation.
What I do know needs more expansion is this rush in the mornings. Journal faster, meditate faster, blog faster, get on the road faster! From the moment I set my mug on my breakfast table it feels like a stop-watch has begun, constricting and awful.
I have talked and delved enough recently to know that I do want to keep this whole morning practice thing the way it is. I really do love it. But there are essential adjustments to be made, whether they’re entirely an internal shift in framing or an external shift in doing, and likely both.
I don’t like feeling like a balloon about to pop. Even if I am filled with candy.
Owning Voice 