hello october and goodbye hurry

easing into the autumn season

Not sure where school started in your neck of the woods, but here in California, children headed back to their classrooms this past August. Sounds insane to type that but that is how it is here. For almost two months, my daughters have been in school and for the past two months, I've been feeling a bit frazzled.

Between two different schools which entail two different drop-off times and two different pick-up times, homework stuff, running errands, food shopping, cooking, cleaning, church, trying to find a moment to get in some writing, etc, and etcetera, I've been feeling a wee bit burnt out.

I understand this is the season of life that I am in and there is absolutely good in it to be sure.

But it's the constant hurrying that is bringing on the frazzle so to speak.

I am constantly hurrying, but to what?

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"Hurry involves excessive haste or state of urgency. It is associated with words such as hurl, hurdle, hurly-burly (meaning 'uproar') and hurricane. It is a state of frantic effort one falls into response to inadequacy, fear and guilt". From the book The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer

When you have somewhere you need to be and you know there is just so much time to get done what you need to get done, you "clock-watch". What was happening was that I would drop my girls off at their respective schools, come home, and as though there was an invisible stopwatch timing me, I would rush around and do everything I possibly could squeeze in, in my allotted time before the school pick-ups started back up again in the afternoon. Monday through Friday, rush, rush, rush.

As each successive week has passed, I have been more and more tired.

I wanted to just slow it all down. "Well then, why don't you?", a voice popped in my head said in all sincerity. "Well because... well... hang on... I can slow down!" *Insert whatever music accompanies epiphanies here*

I can slow down? Yes, it is possible. And that is what I am doing for the month of October. Slooooooowing down. My hope is to make this last longer than the month, but this is where I am right now.

One of my biggest pet peeves is being late. For anything. So, in the mornings, there is the rush to get dressed, eat breakfast, get ready, grab backpacks and get out the door in a timely manner. Rush, rush, rush. Don't be late!!!! But, for October, I am not rushing. I keep an eye on the clock to be sure, but what I have taken out of the equation is basically the need for speed. I am not going to rush. Being late to school is obviously not my intention. But I need my anxious brain to understand that the world will not end if one time out of a thousand, we happen to be a few minutes late. (We've never been late before, but I need my mind to understand that life will be okay without punching the clock). The anxiousness to get out of the door and beat the clock is not the way to spend every weekday morning. I do not want to feel flustered and feel the need to hurry, hurry, hurry. So, I am bowing out. We will get up earlier in the mornings, attempt to pack what we can the night before, and we will get to school on time without an accelerated heartbeat, thank you very much.

Life is not a race. I do not get a medal if I perform all my tasks in a timely manner.

I've decided, in my need to slow down, that I need to focus on what really matters. For example, getting dinner on the table and getting my family fed, that is important. Making the quickest dinner possible to get it over with so I can move on to the next task that needs to be done, not so much. I would like to try and make new recipes for dinner during the week, but I always say to myself that I never have time. But is that actually true? It doesn't have to be a fancy meal on a weeknight but there are plenty of healthy meals that can be made in plenty of time to eat and enjoy, so why do I say I don't have time?

What matters is the meal itself, not how long it takes to prepare it.

Part of being an adult in the modern world is running errands. I kind of wish they had told us this when we were children, maybe we wouldn't have been in such a hurry to grow up 😜 Ah, hurry, there's that word again! But in all seriousness, the food shop needs to be done, trips to this store and that store, oh the car needs an oil change, and on and on. Don't forget any medical and dental appointments! There are ways to reduce our task load to be sure, and I want to get better at that. But part of my slowing down this month means that I do not need to get everything done and accomplished all at once. I am cultivating the awareness that tasks are only important because we say that they are important. Sure, some are, but most aren't. I am now asking myself "do I need to this particular task today? Do I need to do this particular task at all?" The point of asking myself these questions is to not just slow down my brain, but to be present and to not already be in the future already hurrying.

I need to stop, slow down, and take inventory of what actually needs doing.

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Other ways I plan to slow down this month and to be present in the moment:

• Reading more books.

• Savoring my morning coffee instead of inhaling it (IYKYK 😂)

• More baking.

• Sitting down and really listen to a podcast episode instead of doing some sort of task while listening to a podcast episode. I retain more information from the episode when I do this as opposed to multi-tasking while listening to a podcast episode.

• Make some new-to-me recipes for dinner.

• Go for more walks.

• Enjoy the season. Autumn entails trips to the pumpkin patch and hot apple cider and gosh, so many other things. I want to savour the season, not hurry through it like it's a list that needs to be checked off.

I just want to not rush. If something needs doing, it'll get done. But I don't need to do an Olympic sprint in order to get something done. I want to be more mindful of the day, the exact day I am in, instead of always thinking about the future and future things that need to be done.

I'll leave you with these powerful words from Oliver Burkeman and his brilliant book Four Thousand Weeks: "The core challenge of managing our limited time isn't about how to get everything done - that's never going to happen - but how to decide most wisely what not to do, and how to feel at peace about not doing it".

Hello October and welcome 🍂