busyness
There are different types of busyness in my mind. The first category is the busyness that is 'self-imposed'. Busyness that I choose - knowing that it will make me busy but I have control over the choice. I cope the best with this kind of busyness. This includes commitments that are energising even if they fill up a lot of my time (eg. work/uni study). I can also choose to add to or reduce this type of busyness fairly easily - the control is significant in the way I'm impacted by this busyness I suspect.
Another category is the 'shoulds' - things I should do because I feel they are the right thing to do with my time. They aren't as energising, even though I do have some control over them. It often involves pushing myself to do things that I'd more easily avoid, but need to happen. Sometimes, the things on the 'should' list are the things that get lost when I get busy.
The other category I think of is the 'imposed' category. I have little choice about these things. They just need to happen. This involves a lot of things that the children do. I always start the year with my grand plans (we're going to slow down, do less etc etc) but as the term goes on and the list of events at school grows, the grand plans fast disappear.
A good example of imposed busyness was when I turned up for the first day of term 3 last year. I arrived at school feeling good about the term, our diary finally was looking reasonably clear and life was feeling manageable. By the time I'd left the school assembly and heard about the 3 band competitions the kids had been entered into, I saw my lovely clear calendar disappear before my eyes. I may have audibly groaned, which other parents find very strange, because they're just seeing all the wonderful opportunities for the children. I'm just seeing a logistical nightmare and an increase in my stress levels (can you sense it's all about me?!).
It all gets hard when I feel like the first category (self-imposed busyness) has to get ditched/reduced to make way for the other categories. It's not that doing lots for the kids or the 'shoulds' on my list is a bad or horrible thing at all - but without something to energise me I find myself getting a bit sad. When the kids were all younger my life was very dominated by the 'imposed' and 'should' category and I felt consistently very flat. I'm guessing this is how people feel when their whole life is dominated by caring for a sick child or an elderly parent. It's not that in their heart they mind doing it - it's a 'should' that is the right thing to do - but managing the stress of something you have no control over is tough.
Anyway - that's enough rambling for now. Would love to hear your thoughts on this one.
Comments
In terms of your school notes and stationary etc, NSW schools should really take note of the Tassie state system...one flat fee at the beginning of the year(about $270) covers all school excursions, all exercise books, pens, pencils, rulers,textas etc - they just hand them out to all the kids. We also sign one permission note at the beginning of the year and it covers all of the excursions. Easy!
Kids are necessarily involved in more stuff as they grow up. Can't keep to the one thing per child rule. Homework is non-optional. For us, that's an entire afternoon a week at least. Then there's school talks, projects etc that come up each month-ish for each child and require a few afternoons of work. There's student council meetings each week, one child gets elected as an 'eco-captian' and there's another afternoon here and there for meetings... And that's without school sport (one 7.30 morning a week per child), school instrumental music or choir (each a 7.30 start one day per week), church or friends - the things which make life good. Life is unavoidably mad busy once your kids hit mid-primary school.
What I find hard to take is when my expectations are dashed. I had planned to sit in a coffee shop by myself for a few precious hours and Andrew was called out somewhere urgently so I had to go to church to wait for an electrician to arrive. I came close to tears.
I am a school music teacher and it is part of my job to make you groan by providing brilliant opportunities for your kids to develop...
We have certainly found that our life has got a lot busier the more kids we have in primary school - before then they just did piano lessons one afternoon a week - oh that glorious memory! This year we're adding youth group, youth bible study and in another two years a different high school to the mix- I see it just getting busier for the next few years until they can get themselves off to things more independently.
But back to the busyness issue. We are probably just entering the stage of mid-primary mad rush busyness (and acquisition of more musical instruments with that) here. For me, having the kids participate in a few different things after school and during school is a way of helping them to discover where their interests/abilities are. Because I also work a couple of long (8hr) days each week, this also limits after school activities to the days when I am not at work. Generally I try to keep one of the three afternoons I am at home as free as possible.
I think too the trap for the unwary is that we don't realise when we sign our kids up for sport, music lessons or whatever else is that over time, if they improve, the amount of time they take up will also increase (hard to foresee here in the beginning days of trumpet lessons where all I am hearing is very non-melodic honking...)