I clearly remember lamenting how I couldn't get anything finished anymore after we moved in together. I did even less after Jessie was born, and less still when my mother moved in with us--partly because my mother started doing a lot of the tings I wasn't managing anyway, but also because I just couldn't. I have beaten myself up for years because I kept thinking I was just slacking, and I felt guilty about it.
Yesterday, as I moved smoothly through my chores, I realized that it wasn't that I had been doing less for the past 28 years, it was that I had been doing unacknowledged and unappreciated (by me) other things instead. I am not only "retired" now (we'll see how long that lasts!), but I am also an empty-nester, and a woman in a solid relationship built over the past 28 years. A relationship that doesn't take the amount of time anymore that it took to build it. The amount of time and mental energy I am spending on things other than the ones on my "list" (chores and creative) is almost nil. THAT'S why I'm getting done: because there are no longer things that are not on my list for which I am still holding myself accountable.
The fact is, people take time. Whether you are actively engaging with them or not, the people around you take time and mental energy. It may be naive, but I never took that time and energy into account when I was planning what I would get done in a day and madly scrambling to (fail) to accomplish it all--even though I was often (mostly) exhausted at the end of every day. I do not believe it's because I am more efficient now than I used to be. Instead, I think it's that I have fewer things pulling on my mental energy... and maybe that I'm not as overweight as I was for, oh, the past 28 years (try carrying a pack with two water cooler bottles full of water all day and see how much energy you have).
Damn! I was mean to myself for no reason! I criticized and denigrated myself ,and felt small and bad because I didn't clean the kitchen and wash the dishes every night like someone in every other household did. Dave does the cooking, I'm supposed to do the cleaning. I have never managed it on a regular basis till very recently. When I started putting away the food, straightening the kitchen and loading the dishwasher every night right after dinner, I thought it was because I was finally growing up and becoming the adult I should have been by 30. But then I remembered that I was always more successful at these tasks in Montana. I blamed not doing it on being overwhelmed by the house here, but it was the number of people in the house, not the house itself.
Wow. This has been a long ramble about time, and I'm not sure I've quite noodled it all out, but I think I'm on the right track. But the list is calling, and the time allotted for posting is over for the day. I'm going to check in with the rest of the world and then go put away laundry.
1 comment:
Good for you!
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