End Of Vacation

I go back to work tomorrow. I guess technically this is my last day of vacation, but practically it's not. This will be a fairly typical Sunday as I try to get some laundry done, try to do one fun family thing (checking out the New Jersey Children's Museum), and otherwise rush to finish a list of things I feel I need to do before I run out of time for the weekend.

This has been a great break. I didn't spend any time on school work for an entire week other than reading an article that I needed to for a committee in which I'm involved. I had family time. I had Me time. I had time to do things I enjoy like consolidating my photos and videos on my computers (not done yet) and I had time to clean house a little.

When I was visiting my grandmother, my pace of life slowed. We did things slowly, deliberately. There was no rushing to complete too many things. She showed me an enormous binder in which she writes almost daily.

I am not good at living an un-routine life. My school year is half way over and I'm already thinking about the summer and already planning how to have both routine and fun so that I don't worry about how to spend my days. I like to do things quickly, packing as much into a day as I can so I feel I'm using my time well.

But I'm a little jealous of the writing time.

I have worked hard much of my life to become less worried as a person. That's what much of my meditation is and was about when I began it. Of course, that's faltered a lot since I became a full-time working mom and no longer live near my meditation teacher. So lately, I worry. I obsess. I have discovered that, even though I'm not naturally tidy, I'm a type A perfectionist. It's not an easy life. I worry that if I don't write, I won't remember the most important moments of ND's development, that memories and ideas will be lost.

And maybe they will. And maybe they won't. But this is no way to live.

As I go back into work tomorrow, I want to remember to be in the present and to release some of this burden on myself. In fact, I remember now that part of why I like to work so hard is that I don't worry as much when I'm so busy.

But there are other ways, too, to ease up. I want to go back to receiving the blessings Hashem has sent instead of grasping so hard with my camera and my pen at every moment, to preserve that moment in time. I want to just be a little more and trust that my way of being is perfect in its imperfection.