Third Times a Cliche
This is my third attempt at a post today. There are two other drafts that I am working on that need more time and focus than I have right now.
Adrift in a sea of responsibilities and deadlines describes my mental state. Responsibilities of having a family, a business and being a volunteer. A state of sobriety that threatens to drown the person I am and the things I like to do and the person I would like to be.
Summers when I was young, I would read anything I could get my hands on. I would ride my bicycle to the library and check out as many books as I could, return them within a week, check out more. I would read on the back porch on a lawn chair, legs propped on the wrought iron rails. I would read on my belly on a towel in the green bermuda grass. I would read in bed until the book crashed onto my face when I fell asleep.
Every now and then, I would do chores, but only between chapters of whatever I was reading. I would tell my mom or dad about what I was reading. They both professed to love reading and I knew my dad did. I had actually seen him read books. My mom would read the newspaper cover to cover, focusing mostly on the business section. She also professed to love books, but I can only recall one book I have ever seen her read - Mary Higgins Clark's Where are the Children?
I wondered how she could love to read, yet forsake reading? How could she choose to clean the kitchen or fold the laundry over an escape to another world? How could she watch Johnny Carson before falling asleep instead of reading a chapter of a fabulous book?
Now, as I have children and no time and no hobbies and nothing to set me apart other than running, I understand. There is simply not enough time in the day to do everything that you want to do. You have to choose and sometimes those choices are not what you would choose if you only took care of yourself.
Adrift in a sea of responsibilities and deadlines describes my mental state. Responsibilities of having a family, a business and being a volunteer. A state of sobriety that threatens to drown the person I am and the things I like to do and the person I would like to be.
Summers when I was young, I would read anything I could get my hands on. I would ride my bicycle to the library and check out as many books as I could, return them within a week, check out more. I would read on the back porch on a lawn chair, legs propped on the wrought iron rails. I would read on my belly on a towel in the green bermuda grass. I would read in bed until the book crashed onto my face when I fell asleep.
Every now and then, I would do chores, but only between chapters of whatever I was reading. I would tell my mom or dad about what I was reading. They both professed to love reading and I knew my dad did. I had actually seen him read books. My mom would read the newspaper cover to cover, focusing mostly on the business section. She also professed to love books, but I can only recall one book I have ever seen her read - Mary Higgins Clark's Where are the Children?
I wondered how she could love to read, yet forsake reading? How could she choose to clean the kitchen or fold the laundry over an escape to another world? How could she watch Johnny Carson before falling asleep instead of reading a chapter of a fabulous book?
Now, as I have children and no time and no hobbies and nothing to set me apart other than running, I understand. There is simply not enough time in the day to do everything that you want to do. You have to choose and sometimes those choices are not what you would choose if you only took care of yourself.
5 Comments:
Hear ya on the reading...I so desperately miss it. I've been trying to read on the days I take the bus to work, but starting the day off by getting car sick just isn't fun!
PS Books on tape are a good alternative. The Stephanie Plum series is a riot on audio!
Reading, I have stacks up stacks of books just waiting to be devoured. There simply isn't time. Sigh. It's really quite sad.
As I get older I realize that I can't have it all. And it's really really sad.
I hear you.
Oh boy... Do I hear you.
I choose reading books over cleaning any day! My father always has a book going and finishes them quickly, it took Mom longer but she got through them--that is me now. My grandmother reads a book a day in the winter when she is afraid of the weather outside. I keep telling myself I'll have time to catch up on all the reading I'm not doing now later.
lovely post.
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