Thursday, August 25, 2011

Scheduling Time to Breathe

HosmerLakeLife is usually pretty fast-paced here.  Recently, it’s been faster-paced than usual.

Today is the first day of school for my children.  The last week has been a blur of preparations for school, celebrating a family birthday, and other activities.  One of my babies is going to high school today…and I really don’t know where the time has gone.

On Tuesday, there was an earthquake in Virginia.  The tremors were felt as far away as Georgia. 

My dad felt them in South Carolina.  “I was reading on the porch,” he said.  “I felt them for about ten seconds.”

I’d been driving at the time, focused on the task so that I could check something else off my list to get to another thing on my list…and then another.

Several other people asked me if I’d felt anything.  I think, on Tuesday,  the ground would have had to have opened and swallowed me up  before I noticed.  No, I didn’t notice an earthquake. If I felt anything, I probably just attributed it to uneven pavement under the car.

But if I’d been reading on a quiet porch in South Carolina?  Sure. I’d have felt them then.

This makes me think that I need to give myself a little more breathing room each day to just observe

Whenever I’m not running frantically, I’ve noticed that I get more ideas for my writing.  I might get a character idea or a bit of description, or a plot twist.  It might even be something big, like an idea for a series.

Although I don’t see life getting any quieter in the next couple of weeks (the opposite is true, actually), I think I’m going to get up earlier to get prepared for it all so that maybe I can fit in my breathing space between it all.  I usually get up at 5---I think I’m going to make it more like 4:30. And maybe do more list-making the night before I turn in.  That way I won’t be playing catch-up each day.

How do you fit some quiet time into your day?  All ideas welcome. :)