Doing more but not too much

 Yesterday on Facebook Gretchen Rubin had posted:

When I feel distracted or overwhelmed, I remind myself that I can’t blame the internet. If I want a life with more time for calm and reflection, I need to create it for myself.
Agree, disagree?

It made me start to think about all the things that I didn't do last year and the one year we did a lot of things.  I am cautiously optimistic about the upcoming year, specifically the summer when we do most of our vacation/travel.  And Gretchen's post prompted me to reflect on those two years that I mentioned and came to the decision this morning that I need to plan some family adventures.

I don't want to overwhelm myself or my family but I know from previous experience that planning right now while we are in the winter doldrums is good for my mental health because it gives me something to focus on and gives me something to do do. Additionally, it is good for my family because my planning will help create these future family memories.

One thing I need to be aware of is not over planning.  If I try to fill all the time then I and by extension my family will not enjoy the experiences it will be a chore and feel like we are just checking off boxes.

Living in MA my kids school calendar has these two horrible (to me) week long breaks, one in February and one in April.  For as long as I have lived here in MA and my kids being in school I will not understand these breaks and will hate them.  To me these breaks just introduce a lot of chaos and lost time for the learning process because just as kids are hitting their stride with the daily rhythms of learning they have to stop and then it will take time to get that rhythm again.  But I digress.

What I am going to try to do is to create a plan for a monthly adventure for the family.  It doesn't have to be big but something.  It might be a planned hike at a local state park, or a trip to a museum, a picnic.  None of this has to be big.  I could also do a theme day like I did for leap day, or Star Wars day.


 

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