A quick check in

Hi! How are you going?

I feel like it’s time we just all had a little check-in. This wasn’t the post I had planned for today, but with the publishing dates I had set myself for the last three planned posts having whooshed on by, I wouldn’t be surprised if I wasn’t the only one needing a little break from the everyday, and a little reset session. So, with that in mind, what’s going on with you right now?

I am good, but just finding myself very caught up in the everyday. Half of me feels like I want to take a massive step back and buy myself some time to catch up on everything, and half of me (okay, let’s be honest, definitely more than half of me!) thinks that is not at all what I need at the moment. All too often I wind up highly unfocused when I have a stretch of unstructured time in front of me, and I waste that time on things I don’t actually care about, and that are unimportant in the grand scheme of things. My creativity seems to flow best when I am trying to squeeze it into the nooks and crannies of my life, which is intensely frustrating at best and leads to burnout at its worst. And when I say ‘catch up on things’, too many things will never be caught up on! There will always be laundry. There will always be a house project I want to finish off. There will always be things to organise for Amelie, and just one more thing I could do for work, or just one more bit of room that needs to be vacuumed. I’m constantly twiddling round the edges of this chaotic life trying to achieve the one thing that’ll put everything into its right place, for good, and hoping that will finally be the magic key I need to free up my mind enough to work on ‘my own thing’.

This is nobody’s fault but my own. Nobody is asking me to do any of this! Which is, again, very frustrating. And while I feel I have a pretty good understanding of what my self-destructive behaviours are, knowing this is only as useful as what I do with that information. I want to commit to letting go of things like those just listed to buy myself the time to do the creative work I really want to do, but I find myself deeply uneasy with the idea of actually doing that. It’s definitely fear-related! There’s the fear of putting myself out into the world as one thing that feels like it’s opening me up for criticism (I am a creative individual; I create) and there’s fear of risking the things I have previously put myself out into the world as (I am a good mother; I am a good employee; I have a beautiful inviting home).

Yes, I am 100% overthinking this.

I was talking to one of Amelie’s teachers this morning and we were joking about the amount of art Amelie brings home. Seriously, pages and pages every day. We’re going to have to start a tree planting programme to try to offset some of it. Amelie’s teacher said she spends hours, every single day, at the art table drawing and making things. At home, she colours every single night. And we cannot unwrap anything without the box, packaging, and any additional extras (some companies send stickers etc.) being purloined and spirited away into Amelie’s room because she’s seen a way she can use it to make something. She is just constantly creating, all the time, with no expectation that anything will come of it. Isn’t that amazing? Imagine if we were all like that? (With the caveat that we’d obviously have to find a more environmentally friendly way).

It’s not easy and I don’t have any answers, for myself or anyone else! But I thought it was important to acknowledge these thoughts I’m having. I like my blog schedule and I like writing and I like trying to create content that I think will resonate with this community…but at times like this, that schedule can feel like another way I’m trying to control my creativity and turn it into something manageable and pleasing for others, rather than being for me (which really, at its core, this blog definitely is – I don’t get paid for it and that gives me a lot of freedom in return. So that I can, for example, write totally rambling posts like this one).

If this were a conversation with a friend, here’s the point where I’d realise I had been talking about myself for way too long and would turn the tables on them. So how about you? What’s on your mind?

Hmmm what else what else…

I had a really nice Mother’s Day, doing lots of reading and yoga, but I think I over-relaxed and I ended up kind of dissatisfied until I edited some photos…anyone else find too much relaxation drives them a bit bonkers?
I’ve had to go to Auckland lots recently and I’m totally over driving so much, but I’ve been enjoying the city while I’m there. Autumn is a good time to go, I resent being away from the beach too much in summer.
I realised the other day I could spend hours staring into rock pools watching the little creatures in them. They’re fascinating to me.
We’ve had a bit of rain after days and days of sunshine, and I was so pleased for the gardens. I’m officially a country person now.
I haven’t cooked an interesting meal in the longest time and I miss it, but I also haven’t got the bandwidth for it right now. Maybe (hopefully) later this week.
Related, I miss Farro. I love food shopping, especially when it’s for fun. I very much hope they open a Farro in Matakana; seems like the perfect market for them and it’s close enough that I could get there pretty frequently!
Hayden and I were talking about London last night and that made me miss Waitrose and M&S Food Halls.
I think about food a lot. I’m definitely motivated by good food. I will never be a ‘food is fuel’ type of person.
Quarantine-free travel has opened up from New Zealand to Australia and the Cook Islands and I have zero desire to jump on an airplane out of here. That wasn’t how I expected I’d feel! I’m very happy for the people who get to see their families now, though.

Until next time…regular programming will resume soon but sometimes, it’s okay to just put it all out there!