Reverb 14 / The Plank

This month, I’m playing along with Project Reverb and Reverb14. There are different prompts every day; I’ll pick and choose the ones that interest me.

DECEMBER 9 / It has been said that you must learn to take care of yourself before you can be effective at taking care of others. How did you take care of yourself in 2014? How will you take care of yourself in 2015?

I’ve written about this in bits and pieces already, but this was the year I figured out how to make things work again. I feel fully recovered from the disarray that Emma brought into my life. It was welcome disarray…but still disarray. This year I breathed deep, calmed down, and truly adjusted to the “new normal” of my life.

A lot has been written about the value of “me time” for everyone, but especially for parents of young children. In my life, getting time to myself is the single biggest way that I care for myself in order to stay sane for others.

In the purest sense, leisure is not being slothful, idle, or frivolous. It is, in the words of leisure researcher Ben Hunnicutt, simply being open to the wonder and marvel of the present. “The miracle of now,” he calls it, to choose to do something with no other aim than that it refreshes the soul, or to choose to do nothing at all. To just be and feel fully alive.

– from Overwhelmed, by Brigid Schulte

I often wonder if perhaps I’m a glutton for “me time.” I crave it, I get cranky if I don’t get it — so I make sure that I do. I live for flex Friday every two weeks, when I get the whole day to myself to do whatever I want.

But getting me time makes me want more, more, MORE. And I realize it will never be enough. I will never have enough me time to do every single idea that flits through my head. In 2015, I want to appreciate and enjoy the time I do have and stop always wishing for more.

My one little word for 2014 was “calm.” For 2015, I’m thinking about “enough.” I don’t have to keep wishing for more, because what I am doing — and where I am right now — is enough.