On the road again...

For a long time now I have slowly been cutting things that could be cut out of my life. I have been pulling in, and slimming down the things on my to-do list... and last month I started to realise that the things I had been getting rid of to make my life easier were the things I was doing on my own... The things that didn't have anything to do with kids, family, etc.

I would spend time taking pictures, I would garden, I would play my guitar, I worked for a farm that had standards I believe in, I would work with wood, fabric, and paper and make beautiful things, I had chickens (in the city), I cooked good food everyday and took pictures and bragged about it all right here.

Slowly, oh so slowly, I got very overwhelmed. While I was doing all of these things, life happened. My kids started doing badly in school, I got pregnant, Don got a job that he had to commute too... so I adjusted. I pulled Cyan out of public school, had a baby, pulled Alex out of public school... and all of a sudden I was drowning in things I couldn't do right... because I didn't have time to do anything all the way. I hated where I was going with my life. Felt like I was in the middle of the ocean perched on a very precarious rock and I would either fall to one side (rage) or fall to the other (despair). I fell both ways a couple times before I realised it wasn't working.

When we decided to move, I thought that this would be my opportunity to get rid of a few 'extras'. I let things I believed in go... not for lesser things... but for different things. Things that I couldn't necessarily control. I got rid of the chickens. I let my beautiful garden move on to another persons hands. I haven't opened my guitar case since we moved...

Some things ended that were completely out of my control: Logan broke my camera lens. My farm work ended because the season was over. You can't be mad about it... you can't hold on to it... but one day, I looked up and every activity I had done 'just for myself' was gone.

Some of it makes me very sad. But some of it is a relief. And a lot of the time, I can't figure out which is what. I loved doing all of it... but if I wasn't doing any of it well, what should I pick back up now that my slate of things I do in my ten minutes of spare time has been wiped clean?

I want to be successful. I want to have self worth that isn't wrapped up in other peoples achievements. My husband, my kids... I want to have just a little something of my own. Wrong time of year for most of my hobbies... but something I was thinking about tonight.