Geeky Mom

I spent the weekend away from the computer, checking in for only 5 or 10 minutes each day. In so many ways, the weekend truly was a kick-off for the summer. I spent as much time as possible outside, digging in the garden, sitting on the deck, wandering around the yard. And the weather was perfect. Hot during the day followed by a thunderstorm that cooled the night. I remember summer as the most wonderful time of the year. A time when the days dragged out forever. As kids, we played spotlight into the night, ending with kool-aid and watermelon. During the day, we lounged by the pool or lake. We had nothing better to do than drink in the sun, read books and magazines, eat french fries and milkshakes.

As an adult, the days are different. There is no long summer break. I trudge off to work every day, unable to simply let the day unfold as it may, to just wait and see what will happen next. But the days still have that quality of lazy possibility about them. It seems possible to let the day unfold, to see what will happen next. It seems possible that, for a time, the world might spin a little slower, that time will expand and let just one more thought, one more activity squeeze in before we collapse, exhausted, into bed.

I moved slowly this weekend, more slowly than normal. Usually, I’m trying to cram in everything and I’m anxious to get laundry and tasks done so I don’t have to try to squeeze them in during the week. I tend to rush around and when I’m not rushing, my brain is definitely rushing, thinking about all that needs to be done, things to be written down. I worked a lot in the garden this weekend. I’m not what I would call a gardener. I’m lazy about it. I don’t prepare the soil as well as I should. I pick plants that grow without much need for care. I’ve been working on my garden for about three years now. It’s been a slow process, but one I am beginning to appreciate. Sure, I could have a landscaper come in a do all kinds of work for me and my garden would probably look much better than it does, but I like that I’ve done all the work myself. I like that I brought a decades old azalea back to life and that I know where its roots run. I like that I’ve watched tiny shrubs grow and watched the rhododendron bloom for the first time. As I was digging another area to prepare for planting (in my usual lazy way), I thought about how long the soil had been there and thought about the layers. I only dug a couple of feet. I knew it must look really different further down. And I thought about the roots and how long they had been there and how intertwined and connected they were.

What I thought a lot about, what I let swirl around me without thinking about it too much either, was time. I tried to give myself some time to breathe, to just be. But I also thought about how it takes time for change to occur, for any kind of building or growth to occur, like the soil, layer upon layer or my shrubs slow but steady growth. We can certainly spur things on–like I sometimes do in my garden–by doing certain things, but sometimes we have to sit back for a bit and take some time–to think, to rethink, or to let things happen.

The last few weeks have been extraordinarily busy, filled with end of the year tasks and now filled with beginning of the summer tasks. Here’s this week’s schedule.

I know it’s hard to see. It’s just filled. Next week our Summer Multimedia Development Institute begins. The first week is a week of training. It’s intense and long. The week after that are the kids’ birthdays and people visiting from out of town, then there’s a week and then vacation, defense, ugh. I’m just feeling like I’m not going to get everything done. And I feel like I haven’t had time to think. There’s a discussion I was going to be involved in that now I think I should back out of. I’m just not going to have time. But it seems important at a meta level. Plus I have the defense hanging over my head and all the little nitpicky stuff that goes with that–announcing it, applying for graduation, filling out form after form, making sure the margins are exactly right. I am not a detail-oriented person (though I fooled Steve). I’ve developed strategies for trying to keep all the balls in the air, but it takes energy, both physical and mental. It’s like taking an introvert to a party and making them talk to everyone in the room. When I’m faced with a lot of these details, I start to get antsy and overwhelmed. I have to force myself to focus and just plow through some of them.

I have the weekend ahead of me, and I’ve been thinking I should shut down the computer for the weekend and get back into my own head again. I love all the ideas I get from reading blogs and articles, but I think it might do me good to go old-fashioned and jot some stuff down on paper.

Barbara chastised me a bit for quitting my project365. I found I was walking the same path every day and couldn’t find anything interesting to take pictures of. But one thing that taking pictures did for me was to get me to look around and see things a bit differently. So I think I want to return to that project and to try to see things differently again. I think it also makes me slow down and stop and think. As a writer, I used to do this all the time, but I fall out of the habit when the world starts going crazy around me.

What I’ve been thinking about for a while now is what I want to be in the world, how I want to fit, locally, globally. I think about whether a person can change and if so, how. And this is not an “I feel frustrated and so I want to do something different” kind of thinking, though it is related, I guess. I’m trying to feel situated and not situated at the same time. I resist strict categorizations. My mantra has been (stolen from the Mythbusters): I reject your reality and substitute my own. I’m not sure what I’m saying here. These are just the thoughts that have been bouncing around my head. Maybe I’ll figure all of it out by Monday. Right.