Wednesday 27 November 2013

Rhythm revisited

We went through a funk a couple of weeks ago where my body refused to leave the house.  I'm serious.  Gloomy skies hung down over us, the temperature dropped, and I couldn't get myself out the door.  Knitting, toes tucked into wool socks and slippers, hot tea, and a warm fire were all I wanted.  Fresh air seemed overrated.

Yet all of us staying inside and only leaving our comfy abode to run urgent errands is a recipe for stir-craziness.  Thankfully my little ones will go outside on their own and they will, for the most part, get along with one another.  But I think I noticed that too much indoor time for mama led to my own restlessness and discontent growing.  Falling out of our daily and weekly rhythm left me feeling unanchored and like life was slightly spiraling out of control.

At the same time, we had finished up our unit on the human body.  All of the (Canadian) Thanksgiving, Samhain, Hallowe'en, and Martinmas festivals were behind us.  We now had an empty void of time that we weren't accustomed to.  And, I'm coming to terms with my littlest one being a non-napper and quieter afternoons for planning and prepwork (or knitting) being a thing of the past. 

So, I find myself in the midst of transition.  Of discovering that it feels like too much effort to get outside twice before lunch...once all the socks are found, the snowsuits are donned and the winter boots are laced up.  Of realizing that we won't be able to do that deep dive into the world of birds without a lengthy pause as we prepare for and celebrate Christmas and that we should postpone that to the new year and do something lighter and less intense instead.  Of finding my evening hours getting longer and longer with planning for the days and weeks ahead and striving to keep my head above water.

All this means that that lovely rhythm we had created in September and tried hard to follow through on in October is begging for a tweak here and there.  It means I'll need to be aware of the impact the physical change of seasons in this part of the world has on our days, instead of insisting that winter doesn't start until December 21!  It means I'll need to do a better job next year of building a skeleton for our whole year in advance so that I'm not surprised by this two or three week space I find myself now in.

I'm now willing myself to step outside again once a day.  We usually get out in the morning, after we've finished our formal bookwork.  And it's usually not as cold as I expect it will be.  We're spending the next few weeks in a unit about snow, as I come to terms with the white stuff being around for the next five months or so, as we bring our awareness to the changes happening in nature around us.  I'm now setting aside one afternoon a week to bake with Astrin.  I'm also trying to spend a wee bit of time in the afternoons, while the children read, working a row or two of what happens to find itself on my knitting needles.  I'm trying to get myself to bed a little earlier at night so I don't feel like the walking dead the next day.  It feels like I'm trying to regain what I lost by letting my own rhythm slide.  I know it's a good thing.

When the holidays are over and I find myself juggling less, I'll look a little more closely at our rhythm and whether it is still working for us or if it needs more of an overhaul.  Do we need to have a set day of the week for baking, making soup, doing laundry, painting, modeling, and whatever else?  How does this work when external factors seem to put flux into a predetermined schedule before the ink has even dried on the page?  Is it that I need to be more diligent or discerning about the things I allow to change our rhythm?  Is it just that I need to relax and go with the flow a bit more?  Have I thoroughly observed and thought about how my children react to changes in our daily and weekly rhythms?

Hmmm...it seems that while I have lots to think when New Year's approaches, I have a pretty good idea of one of the themes that may show up in my resolutions!

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