I was driving home from church tonight and I started thinking to myself about the last few years and how I keep thinking of them as transition time. So much "as soon as THIS happens, THEN..." Like once I get married, once I graduate college, once I get a "real" job, once we stop living in dorms, once we have a baby, once we aren't apartment managers anymore...I keep looking at where we're going, and I think I'm forgetting about where we're at. THIS is our life right now. Yeah it is a transition, we probably won't be apartment managing here in Salem forever (what a thought!), but I look around and think of other people as settled, when really they're finishing up school, or not in the "perfect" career, etc. etc. If I just keep thinking about where we'll go next, I'm not going to make the connections here that I'd want to - making close friends, putting time into our home, etc.
I think that a clear demonstration of this whole idea I'm thinking about is that we haven't put things on the walls in our apartment. I mean there are a couple things, but barely anything at all. Not in Joshua's room, not in our bedroom, not anywhere really. For one thing, we have always lived in college dorms before now, where we weren't supposed to put any holes in the wall, so that's part of it. Also, since we haven't lived anywhere where we had stuff up before, we don't have the like "Joshua's room" decorations (we didn't have a Joshua's room at our last apartment), or any specific spot that other pictures go. I think that once we do put that stuff up, it'll feel more like home. It does feel like home now, but the blank walls in our bedroom and Joshua's room especially really get to me. We need some stuff for his room! We have tons of photo frames, but then it's a matter of choosing from the billions of pictures. Well there's another goal I have - get a bunch of pictures developed so that we have them to put in the frames. Put those frames up on the walls and if I want to change the photos, do it later. They don't have to be perfect...any pictures I choose will be just fine if I like looking at them!
It's late. I was really hungry about an hour ago, and Nathan said I should go to bed cuz it's not good to eat right before bed (true), but I told him I can't go to sleep hungry. So for some reason, for the next hour I proceeded to not eat at all, but instead unload and reload the dishwasher, clean up the kitchen, fold and put away the towels in all the various locations they go, fold and put away/hang up the whites, sort the laundry into three more loads for tomorrow morning and put them in piles in front of the washer & dryer, and THEN I heated up two corn muffins and put some butter and honey on them, and had a cup of orange juice. Then I posted on here and now I'm going to go to bed!
Goodnight moon. Goodnight mush.
3 comments:
I totally know what you are talking about. I used to look at my life as "the next step" but lately have realized too that I need to live in the current moment. I understand the pictures on the wall. Every place that we have lived in , the first thing that I do is hang something on the wall. It feels too sterile for me without something up. Good luck picking out the pictures!
AmandathePhilosophicalPanda,
Once again, you've motivated me.
John Lennon wrote, "Life happens while you're busy making other plans." So many times, I've done the "After this happens, THEN I'll make time to do that" -- and found that after THIS came something else -- and the pictures still weren't hung! Living in the moment, as much as any of us can, means we can be happy where we are, right now. And when we decide to live NOW, it's amazing how much more we can do, within our homes, within our selves -- and beyond all our walls.
I love you so much. And thank you.
Mom
Good job getting your laundry done. He he, I just figured my first comment on here had to be something to that effect! : )
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