a quiet season

Lately I have been tired in a way that sleep doesn't seem to fix. I think a lot of it is leftover from teaching. By the end of the school year, I was running on almost nothing. There was always someone who needed something from me, always something to prepare, grade, do, finish, answer, solve. It was never "done." Of course, even after school and on the weekends I never really felt finished. There was always more, looming. To add insult to injury I was even criticized by a parent one time for, according to them, "just doing 9 to 5." I was thinking, boy if you only KNEW the amount of hours outside of work that I am literally working...

Now that that's over, I've been looking forward to feeling normal again. But the summer has been busy - we had a huge move and even though we had all the help you can possibly get, I still feel like I'm carrying on tired every day.

I keep thinking it's because I need to get the new house more organized, make a cleaning schedule, exercise more and get back my strength, and start all the projects I've been putting off.

But then it occurred to me that maybe what I need isn't to do more or to fix anything right now. Maybe what I need is just to do less and to be at peace with that.

And so, I begin a quiet season. In then sense of things like... going to bed early. Making simple food (this is a hard one for me because I love to cook and bake). Just sit outside and read a book I enjoy. 

I think it would be tempting in this age of social media for someone to turn a time like this into a project in and of itself, but I aim to do the opposite. For now, all I want to do is to make my days a little more cozy, a little more soft.