Sunday, October 30, 2011

Time: a few thoughts.

Hello blog.

It's been a while. I've been lurking around the blogosphere, but not really engaging. My time and energy has been better spent elsewhere. Maybe I'll get back to some type of regularity soon, but no promises. I certainly have lots of parenting-living-making-cooking stuff in my head that I'd love to think through and talk out. Not to mention a backlog of made objects that I could show-and-tell. But I'm feeling a bit aimless, a bit unsure of where clutterpunk fits into the wacky world of blogging these days, and particularly unsure of where it fits into daily life. I do sometimes scratch my head and wonder how I used to make the time to hang out over here so often.

Funny thing is, I'm not absent because I'm busy. Quite the opposite. I'm very, very unbusy, and deliberately so. I've been on the s-l-o-w bandwagon ever since the monotasking revelation, and the slowness is continuing to seep into the corners of our way of life.

But wait - don't I have three kids at home? Isn't life busy? "You must be busy!" is the constant remark that all mothers of young ones are familiar with.

 Not really. Yes, there is a certain amount of relentlessness and perpetual motion to the whole thing, the waking-playing-eating-messing-fighting-dressing-eating-packing-unpacking-talking-walking-fighting-scooting-biking-fighting-talking-reading-painting-cleaning-holding-washing-cooking-eating-bathing-reading-cuddling-sleeping that goes on between the hours of 6am and 8pm (and the feeding-holding-rocking-cuddling overnight). The boys in particular are constantly moving; they do what they do with vigour. But our time is our own, and in the spirit of idle parenting we have not scheduled much in during the week apart from kindergarten, which leaves us flexible with time and able to spend it as we please.

And as a family we like to spend our time on relationships. We're people people, and we've been spending a lot of time with each other, and with friends old and new, and with our Creator, and out and about in our neighbourhood. As an 'unwaged' person, time is my commodity, and I've been really grateful about that choice during the last six months, which for a variety of reasons has been a relationally intense time. People have needed me and I've needed people. Relationships thrive on time and I've had time to give (if little else!).

Blogging to me is also primarily about the relationships, which is why I don't like posting if I can't also give time to reading and replying and interacting. I probably need to figure out whether I want to 'make time' to reinvest in the blog and the blogging world, and what that looks like.

Meanwhile, time passes. From my current vantage point, it feels like it is passing slowly, and that's a good thing. 


Susannah at six months.