Carla has begun third grade and by all reports, it is going swimmingly so far. While I miss having her sunshiny presence in the house, I have been eager to get my days back. I have writing to do and edits to make and housework to complete.
But I haven’t quite been able to get my sea legs yet. I feel a little directionless, drifting on an ocean of possibility, but not finding anywhere to drop my metaphorical anchor.
Part of my aimlessness, I think, is that the house is a mess. It’s cluttered with all the flotsam and jetsam a busy eight-year-old produces. So, I think, start there: clear the house of clutter and you’ll feel accomplished and free to sit down and work on all the other items on the to-do list. I did a first pass, pulling things off the walls (Carla’s long-abandoned reading tracker, an old poster from second grade, a few pictures she’d taped to her door) and wiping down the whiteboards that held our summer schedules and to-dos. I did a bunch of laundry and folded much of it. My husband, without being asked, went through the towering pile of mail that clings barnacle-like to the little sideboard near the garage door.
Somehow, this did very little to free the house of its cluttery, oppressiveness. And even though I have settled in my writing chair, with a good idea about what to write, my brain feels unsettled and overcrowded. I keep thinking of things I could do that I don’t want to do: put the new fall schedule up on the whiteboards, finish folding the laundry, clean out the bucket that Carla filled with exploded water balloon fragments after last week’s playdate, tidy my desk or my bathroom, paint my toenails, take out the trash, get dinner started in the crockpot, finish unpacking the suitcases from our trip of two weeks ago, implement the edits I painstakingly made to my manuscript, exercise.
I am fretting about a work thing, a family thing, a friend thing. The news is, once again, still, endlessly, terrible and disheartening. I am dreading Carla’s first soccer practice, during which I will surely be expected to talk to strangers. I keep trying to listen for the air conditioner, which decided to stop working yesterday for several hours, until our house was 82 degrees inside. (It came back on just in time for my husband to come home, ask why it was so hot inside, and then squint at me uncomprehendingly when I told him the air conditioner was broken.) I have a head cold, or a sinus infection, or something that makes me feel foggy and drippy and cranky all at once. I have a giant, inflamed mosquito bite smack in the middle of my forehead. Everything feels rumpled, troubled; ill-tempered waves lashing at me from all sides.
I think what I need to do is make an old-fashioned To Do List and start crossing things off. But the prospect of doing such a simple thing makes me feel limp with I don’t wanna.
Surely you have felt adrift in this way before. What do you do to restart your engine and coax your ship forward, in any direction at all?
When I can’t even face making a list, I tell myself to just do one thing. No matter how unimportant, no matter how small, do one thing. Then see if I feel up to doing one more thing. Eventually it seems to break up the logjam. I hope yours breaks up soon.
My goal is to try to make the house ten minutes better than yesterday, every single day. I can usually manage ten minutes.
I have two approaches. One is to make a master to-do list and then use a post-it on top of that to designate three things to do that day. The other approach is to lean into the fog and aimlessness, knowing that it will pass. I have learned over time that if I stop trying to fix it, it passes and I naturally pick up the pace again. I keep telling myself to be as gentle and kind to myself as I’m being to my kids as we all go through this transition!
I think it’s okay to take a day or three to reset! It has been a long year of her being at home, and the rhythm won’t settle itself immediately. Read, rest a little. Allow it. 🙂 Hugs, I totally get this feeling.
It’s normal to have moments of turbulence and feel like you’re drowning. I usually just let myself feel the emotions for a specified amount of time, then when the time is up, I list out each thing that is troubling me and try to resolve it. Either that or eat pizza 😅
It helps me to make a separate “worry list” with everything that is causing stress or anxiety or grief. Items routinely range from “the world is burning” to “I can’t decide what curtains to buy.” A list is less intimidating than journaling and still gets the worries out of my head. An added benefit is looking at the length of my list; if I am worried about all of these things, no wonder I can’t focus. It can be oddly validating, which helps me get unstuck. Take good care.
Usually, I pick one thing and go from there. But, I think, after this past year it’s normal because your old routine is gone and you haven’t had time to settle into a new one (or the pre-pandemic one). Give it a few days, eventually you’ll settle into a routine again.
Sometimes I think that we need to have days to just…do nothing, which I find I need when things happen like the boys go back to school. There will be time to find the rhythm again! Just…maybe tomorrow? Know what I mean? Sometimes if I give myself a day to just not feel guilty about not doing anything productive, I feel more motivated.
Also, when I feel swamped and overwhelmed, I think “start small” and then I do one small thing and I can generally build up momentum from there.
I think this is key. Sometimes you need to sit and stew in your lack of productivity. Sometimes you need to give yourself a week to do the bare minimum and then when you get back to things, you’ll be back with enthusiasm.
Ha! I thought “make an old fashioned” was the end of your sentence. Oh well, maybe next time. 😁
I totally relate. There is always SO MUCH TO DO and I hate it when I don’t know where to start. For me, I feel better after exercise. A list is key to me. I sometimes find my list so overwhelming, that I start over. I write down the simplest of things so I can feel accomplished. Some days less things get crossed off than what I’d hoped. Ah, well that’s where tomorrow comes in. I had ‘paint toenails’ on my list for DAYS before it actually happened even though it only took minutes. I was about to walk out the door to go somewhere wearing sandals and I was like THAT’S IT, DOING THE TOES. NOW. Priorities.
I know this feeling so, so well and I hope you’re giving yourself a lot of grace as you enter this new phase! It’s a big change for your family, so it makes a lot of sense that you would feel a bit adrift. I think everyone has given excellent suggestions already, so all I will say is I have been there. <3