It's Mom's turn to post, and I am happy to hand over the reins this Monday morning. I mentioned the difficulty of balance earlier this month with my The Delicate Balancing Act of Life post. Enjoy Mom's take on a similar idea.
***
There are some things I just won’t do. I took one look at bungee jumping and knew I had too many things left on my bucket list. Trust me, I am never going to eat escargot no matter how much garlic butter you drizzle on it, period. I’m also not going to play chicken; why tear up a perfectly good car. And, I’m never, yes never, going to cliff dive off the Bridge at Seven Pools in Kipahulu. Nope, not for a billion dollars, not that anyone’s offering.
However, I was startled the other day when a friend poised a question that elicited the response, “What the . . . You want me to do what?”
The question: “Can you slow down?”
What in the world did she mean by that? I AM slow. I mean I’m crawling. Well, maybe not today, or yesterday, but tomorrow I will show her a thing or two. Slow down? I’m all about relaxing, sunning−as soon as I clear a few things off my calendar, I’ll be ready to party!
I walked over to check on those party dates, and well . . . that’s the deepest word I can come up with to own up to my crisis. Okay, I admit it, I am a little overbooked. Now it’s only a temporary nuisance that I’ve created, you understand. I told my husband, “We’re retired! We can do what we want to do, anytime we want to do it.”
He said, “Look at the damn calendar.”
He pointed out that of the 72 days of summer (June 21 to my cut-off of August 31), we have 15 days with nothing to do. What does the man want? He has 20% of the summer to plan. He should be a little more humbled by my efficiency.
Alone, I realize I am too busy. Where’s the whole business of “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” these days?
Gypsy Rose Lee spouted, “It's hard to face the problem when the problem is in your face.” But I have to! So I think I will endorse another saying of Gypsy’s, “If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing slowly . . . very slowly.”
So I implemented a new strategy. I still book things, but I’ll plan on everything taking twice as long. Perfect! From this day forward, I do declare to plan the fun before the maddening pace!
Girls,
That's all they really want
Some fun
When the working day is done
Girls, they want to have fun
Oh girls just want to have fun!
Do you need to schedule some fun?
9 comments:
I schedule fun in all the time. Slowing down, however, is not necessarily my fun time. To me, that's just slowing down, or down time, when I have absolutely nothing on calendar--on purpose. That's difficult to plan but always welcome.
Thanks for stopping by, Jackie! I find I can only have fun if I focus on slowing down (otherwise I'm distracted). Sadly, I have to schedule "free/slow" days out of my house so I'm not tempted to get things done.
Blogathon has brought us such great support. Thanks for being a part of that!
When my kids were at home, life was a blur of activities. When they were in college, I was a high school librarian and my students wanted me to come to every activity imaginable.
Now that I'm sorta retired, I've slowed down a fair bit. Still reading my books-to-review a whole lot faster than I write their reviews, though...
When my husband retires (Lord, please grant that time to be far, far away), we'll travel more and may get to Tia's Mom's state of busy-ness.
**Katy M
Recommending YA books beyond the bestsellers at http://BooksYALove.blogspot.com
Follow me on Twitter @BooksYALove
Last summer it finally dawned on me that I always look forward to summer and then summer becomes this jam-packed schedule of craziness...
But at least, I'm not teaching school. So we're good.
Loved the cute post! So nice to share it with your Mom!
j
Katy & Jan, I'm enjoying the blog world so much more since you fine ladies (Jackie, too) have welcomed me into your community. Thanks for all your support and for visiting/commenting.
Mom's enjoying it more now, too. I'll wrangle her for some comments.
And wrangle me she did! I always read each day's postings and all the comments, but answer them all in my head. Guess that's not the point, is it? I love this blog thing. I write daily anyway, so when Tia asks me to write something it's a wee bit of a challenge to keep it short and sweet without the "flowery mess" Tia claims I usually add. Sorry, Tia.
I truly thought retirement would bring us to the rockers, but that ain't happened. Trust me, my Sweetheart would love it if I joined him for his afternoon naps, but he is retired!! This is my only time to have quiet...like when the kids were in school. You have to catch those moments when someone's not asking questions or talking to you all the time to focus. Bless his heart!
But seriously...slow down...and keep life in balance. There's a lot of distractions - too many things pulling at our time, but here's the bottom line...we make the choices how we fill it. I'm working on mine.
Angela Silverthorne
Love you, Mom . . . now we just have to bring you into THIS century and take you from Anonymous to Angela when posting . . . baby steps!
Sadly, I too have to schedule "free" days, and I only work part time. A funny scheduling story: I set aside today, not necessarily for a fun day, but to attend a one-day class on Photoshop. I decided that I needed to take a day for myself and learn something I've always felt I needed to know. I've had today marked out in my calendar, with a big "X" over the day for about a month. I went to verify the time of the class Sunday evening when I realized I marked out the WRONG day! The class was on Monday, not Tuesday, and Monday was booked! Sometimes you just can't win! ;)
Thanks for stopping by Aunty JuJu. I chuckled at your predicament, only because I've done similar things. I hope you used your "Xed out" Tuesday for some fun!
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