Displaced: Not For Long

For some rea­son I thought with the older kids back in school and no longer home­school­ing I would have more free time. More time than I could pos­si­bly fill and I would never have enough tasks to com­plete. I told Mike I was wor­ried I would be bored and find myself wan­der­ing around with noth­ing to do. Aim­less wan­der­ing in a bathrobe, paja­mas and fuzzy bunny slip­pers came to mind, which is odd since I do not own a pair of fuzzy slip­pers and have never own a pair of fuzzy bunny slippers.

Nonethe­less, I was feel­ing dis­placed as to what my role is and what I am sup­posed to be in life. After all I made choices for work and life around the needs of home­school­ing the kids and help­ing them grow as peo­ple. In some ways my iden­tity had become “that home­school­ing mom with the bunches of kids” and that is exactly how peo­ple would greet me “Oh, you are that home­school­ing mom with the bunches of kids I saw you guys at Mass on Sun­day. How’s it going?” I still had the bunches of kids but a key part of how I was known has changed.

Mike lis­tened to me lament on and on and reminded me that I have never man­aged to stay empty handed for too long. He rightly pre­dicted I would fill my time up and find myself just as busy as I was before, he even offered to let me orga­nize the stor­age side of base­ment if I couldn’t find any­thing to do on my own (he is such a gen­tle­man that way). Yet, my dis­place­ment and worry about too much free time lasted for all of five min­utes, maybe six if I am gen­er­ous. It turns out that with the start of school for myself, sev­eral writ­ing projects I am com­plet­ing (and should really focus more on), research that is under­way, and the younger two kids still at home com­bined with all my daily tasks that keep pil­ing up I am more than busy, I am up to my eye balls in work and that my time is nei­ther free nor empty.

And ya know what? That is a good thing, it is life and if I don’t move with it and embrace the NOW, I won’t be liv­ing and instead I will be hold­ing on to what some­one else thinks of me ver­sus liv­ing who I really am. And that right now is a very happy, very busy, very loved woman.

Tagged as: family, identity, learning, me, self, work