Ticking Into the Future

You know the fable about the ant and the grasshopper? I’m feeling just slightly like the grasshopper right now. I’m not sure it’s possible to get to the end of summer and not have a bit of regret about the things I should have taken care of during the appropriate season.

Part of my regret stems from the fact that things are about to get busier again, after a relatively quiet summer. I’m not sure I’m ready for the busyness. There’s going to be travel, and more socialization than I get in a week, let alone in a day, and I’m going to be away from home for repeated stretches again. There are little plans all throughout September and October, and then Halloween will be here, and we’ve been discussing a costume for months.

It’s an odd echo from a year ago when we were scrambling to do wedding planning and it was as though somehow the big day had managed to sneak up on us (of course, our first anniversary is mixed into the “little” plans in October). Things were a bit more chaotic then, which I can’t really say is a comfort this time around, because there are still big ripples from that chaos coming through right now. Funny how time works like that (time blindness too).

With all of that busyness in mind, updates here are going to be pretty brief for the next few days, and it’s possible I will just make a habit of going quiet over the weekends or holidays. I’m definitely still building up my stamina to keep doing this on a near-daily basis. Weirdly, it’s easier to imagine doing posts for 31 days straight when there’s a goal post in sight. But just doing them to do them? That’s somehow completely different.

For some reason, it’s difficult to be mindful about this place on the weekends. Saturday and Sunday are pretty much always where I will struggle, because those days are without form and structure. It’s ironic (I think?) to have 48 hours completely at my disposal, no work, no major commitments, and to somehow be unable to remember to do this one thing for myself, even when I remember to do it 5 other days in the week, when I’ve committed large chunks of my time to work and the necessities of daily living. It’s not a habit yet, which it turns out are things I have to aggressively cultivate in order to get them to stick. Maybe by next year this will be more ingrained somehow. That’s a long way away though.