I am in the middle of my "crazy, fun" season. October through February is a crazy busy time for me. For a good chunk of it, I feel completely overwhelmed. However - it's all fun stuff, so I never complain about it. Ok - "never" is strong. I do most of it to myself, so I don't feel that it's right to complain. Unfortunately, I've noticed myself complaining a lot these past couple of weeks. Tonight I figured out why.
I haven't been "living in the moment." Obviously, with the holidays upon us and all of the festivities and all of the extras that I have to do, there is a fair amount of time that needs to be spent on looking towards the future for planning purposes. There also needs to be some time looking back (how did we arrange the nutcrackers last year?). But the most important part of all that planning and all of the traditions is to enjoy them while they're happening.
This year - just in case I'm not usually busy enough - I volunteered in both of my girls' classes for their Halloween parties and I was slotted to help with their girl scouts service project collecting food for needy families for Thanksgiving. Add to that all of the extras that the schools do to make school fun (never forget to send the stuffed animal on the day they get to bring stuffed animals to school - never!) and I am in complete overwhelm overload! Now in my defense, I've been complaining nicely. I haven't used a sour tone or bad words. It's been "jokingly" complaining.
Well, tonight I decided it had been too long since I blogged, so I was looking through some writing ideas and I came across "My Creaking Body". This was an idea I had when I hadn't hiked for a month and I noticed my body "creaking" more often than it had been - literally! My knees cracked, by back strained, I grunted every time I got out of a chair. I wanted to write about how much I had come to love hiking and how it was benefiting me. But when I sat down to try to write I realized that I've only hiked once in the past month and today, my body isn't creaking. Hmmm...I thought - why is that? What did I do today?
Today was the service project with my daughters' girl scouts troops. Two things hit me next. One was that I'm definitely onto something with getting exercise vs. creaking. We hit the streets today - going door to door asking for donations. Granted, it wasn't strenuous exercise by any stretch of the imagination, but I wasn't sitting and I was outside. The other was something that one of the other moms said towards the end of the event. She said, "This is so fun."
I'll admit, at the time she said it, I thought, "yeah, whatever - you're a better mom than I am." But as I was pondering why that particular thought popped into my head is when it hit me that I'm not "living in the moment." She was right - it was fun. The kids all had a great time. They raced house to house to see who got to ring the bell, they got excited when someone gave more than just one can and they even got one of the dads to pull each of them in the wagon. They got to decorate the bags for delivery, eat cookies and drink hot chocolate. It was even fun for me - I got to see some of my friends, meet a few new moms and see the joy in my children's faces as they enjoyed a beautiful day outside.
But I had been too caught up in what I had to do to help the event. Too caught up in the fact that I had to help at all. To be honest, I was still reeling from having to help in their classrooms on Halloween. So here's my "a-ha moment" for the day - or more appropriately, my "a-ha reminder moment" - enjoy it! Live in the moment. Treasure these moments that are going to pass all too quickly. And I'm not just talking about the "they're only small once" moments (although those are certainly important). I'm talking about all the moments. If you - ok, if I - have said yes to doing something, enjoy it. We've all made plans with friends or family out of obligation or even for fun and thought, I could be doing something else that's a better use of my time. And maybe that's true. But the point is, you've made the plans - you can grumble through them, or you can enjoy them. The choice is yours. No one is going to make you have a bad time and no one is responsible for you having a good time - only you.
What I'm most thankful for today is that this "a-ha reminder" came to me at the beginning of the season. I'm sure there will still be some amount of stress involved in the planning of events big and small. The good news is that as the time of the event gets closer, I'm going to remind myself to live in the moment - and be thankful for the busyness that keeps my body from creaking!
