Friday brought the end of a week that had us all feeling pretty exhausted. As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I’m not even certain why…it wasn’t any more busy or nuts that most weeks, but for some reason we’ve all been feeling pretty drained. Henry demonstrated it pretty well Friday morning, burying himself in some blankets in the play room.
Gotta’ tell you, there are plenty of days I feel like burying myself under some blankets and pillows and just hiding out. It has been hitting me lately that in some ways I kind of have been doing that. Without intending to, I’ve fallen off the map a little with friends and family outside of this house. There are so many phone calls I mean to make, emails i mean to send and texts I intend to respond to. But the days just keep slipping by and “I’ll get to it tomorrow” turns into getting to it the next week or month.
Part of is that time really has been moving at a clip I just can’t seem to keep up with. The weeks fly by and every day I have a list of things left undone.
Part of it is just available time and bandwidth. Life is busy, and I’m sure anyone reading this has their own version of that. There are never enough hours in the day. Even writing this blog generally happens pretty late at night. This particular post, I’ll tell you, I’m partially writing with one hand because Henry is having some trouble falling asleep and he’s on my left arm right now. Fun fact: I suck at typing with one hand.
And I don’t doubt that there is some underlying piece of me that is hiding out a little like Henry was in those blankets. I certainly know I’ve had that feeling and tendency at points in the past year. There have been some difficult and stressful stretches and sometimes I can crawl inward a little when that happens.
But the irony there is that those are the times when we need people the most, and I do want to do a better job of tossing off those blankets and being more out there. I have wonderful people in my life and as we all know, this pandemic has been isolating. Certainly, I think as the world opens up again we’ll all find better footing. I know I’m trending in that direction. To anyone out there reading this that hasn’t heard from me lately, I assure you it is not because I’m not thinking of you. I am. And even though life can be busy and go by fast, it’s important to remember to connect with others and foster those connections with the ones we love.
Like Ferris Buehler says, “Life goes by pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
Henry was a good lesson on that front on Friday, too. When the time came for school, he was super excited and made sure we left on time so he could be there at the bell to see his friends. I walked with him to school. Well, I walked, he ran.
And that reminded me that even if I spend a little time under the covers, all it takes to turn that around is a little effort and a spring in the step.
