Summer is a time when everything comes due. All the paperwork I need to complete, gets done. The projects we’ve been putting off, get scheduled. Haircuts, dentists, physicals, extra appointments like for eyes and skin and whatnot, they get put on the list too. I look at July and aside from the week we were on vacation in North Carolina, every day held a master list of plus ten.
Not quite a rat race but close enough…
Somehow, being a parent of older kids, has made life more busy, not less. Not sure why when everyone is self sufficient, I have less time but there it is. And you know what I really don’t like? Those chirpy motivational posters that declare all of life mastered if we just follow simple rules, like 8-8-8 –eight hours of sleep, eight hours of work, eight hours for outside of work. I don’t know about you, but my life is neither that seamless nor that evenly divided.
I’ve done some of the math. Let’s break it down. By the perfectly ballanced premise of 8-8-8, two-thousand, nine hundred and twenty of those hours a year should be spent sleeping. We’re going to say this works the same way “Sleep when the baby sleeps” works. It doesn’t.
All of Gaul may be divided into three parts, but my life is subdivided into the sixty hours I need to teach my daughter to drive, but there are two of them learning so that’s 120 hours. Meal time prep, serving and clean up takes about three hours of the day so in a week, that’s 21. However, I should also get 5-7 servings of vegetables, four glasses of 8 fluid ounces water a day and one hour of that day should be harder exercise. This doesn’t include work, hobbies, phone calls or transportation time by as near as I can figure, to do all that is expected in a day, I need a calendar oriented around the solar orbit of the second planet from the sun. That’s right, to do all that women or at least this woman needs to do, I need to not simply be from Venus, I need days that measure accordingly.
If we had Venus days, I’d have 5, 832 hours, then I might be able to get everything done that needs doing –in a leap year…for Venus.
Back on Earth, where I’m confined to a mere 24, my list of to do’s often runs past 15 and I’ve had to place a firm limit that if it looms towards 20, I must write them for the next day. That being said, until I made this resolution, whatever was optional, took it on the chin. That would include writing. So I’m here now.
All of which is to say, it is about to be August and I am back.
What does that mean for you?
It means I intend to be a writer not in theory, but in practice.
So what wisdom has my month long sabatical from Patheos and all other publications brought me? –Wisdom that to be a writer, one must prioritize getting words on the page, just as to be a Catholic, one must prioritize prayer. Writing for me is a form of prayer, and I need to do more of both.
So here’s to a fresh start and a new day. I am setting a schedule. Posting is mandatory on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. All other days are bonus. Writing is on the list, but Patheos is now on the schedule.
What wisdom do I have for you today? Saint Augustine said it well, “Love, and then do as you will.” It sounds at first glance like a credit card to act with abandon, but everything you do must be first born out of love –of God and others –so it requires we scrutinize, are we loving, are we being loving? And is what we will, loving? It’s a condensation of Christ’s words. So seize the day. Love, and do as you will. I’ve written more than five hundred words –so I’m going to praise God and go swimming.
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