Tag: motherhood

I have a distinct memory, of all the thing I was ever interested in (when I was much younger than I am now), being made into daily practices. Somehow, I would find a way to return to them again and again, day after day. Nowadays though, it seems like I can’t find the focus or the memory, or perhaps the executive functioning to keep up that kind of regularity apropos of no external structures.

Perhaps I tied my interests to activities I would undertake regularly. Like with writing, I regularly woke up in the middle of the nigh during my GCSE years. Looking back I think it was likely that the stress was impacting my sleep. My sleep is often quite sensitive to being influenced by stressors in my life. That said, if I woke up in the middle of the night, I would bake some cookies, them load either Julia Nunes or Taylor Swift up on YouTube, and get to writing. I woke up in the middle of the night often enough in my teens, that I had quite a regular writing practice. Or with rollerblading, it would always be on a weekend, and always along the thames pathway from Battersea to Chelsea.

I suppose there’s also something about the relatively fewer amount of responsibilities I had as a teenager than I do now. As a single mother/full time student/ trainee counsellor, there’s so many more things “to-do” that it seems like the energy for pursing things I enjoy with the regularity (probably) needed to improve, happens very sporadically- (when the kids are away, I find myself returning to journaling, and meditation, and maybe with e ought time to practice scales and chords, yet when they’re back, there’s barely enough executive functioning to go around, what with keeping track of all the things that need keeping track of when you have young children in the house.)

I have this little voice in the back of my head, that’s quite persistent in reminding me not to forget *whatever hobby/ fun interest of mine catches my attention presently. And the high I get from engaging in things I find fun, means that once I’m sat down, I tend to zone in completely, losing sense of time and place, and then I’ve spent four hours knitting something, and quite possibly have to run out of the door to pick the kids up, suddenly aware of the need to pee, and thirst wracking my throat.

My ideal would be to be able to dedicate myself a bit at a time to all of my interests every day. there would be time for painting, time for writing poetry. I would spend time writing any of the novels that I’ve left mid stories, characters on the cusp of their respective character development journeys. I’d find time to bake, and find new nutritional recipes to try out. I’d finally get round to re-learning how to sew using a sewing machine, and I’d spend time speaking to guests on my podcasts. There would also be time to play around editing videos, and polish off my website, playing with and further developing my web building skills. I’d also create time to keep going with teaching myself to code.

It is a blessing, being filled with so many things that spark my interests, being so deeply interested in many things, yet the challenges of time-blindness, and difficulties with focus, alongside the organisational requirements of ‘running a household’ as well, as the time and focus I put into parenting, talkies of learning and CPDs- I find myself mourning how quickly time passes by.

So here I am, returning to one of my early interests, blogging. I’m curious to see how long I can keep up some level of consistency with it, and I’m happy, I’ve found a few moments to return to it.

I suppose that’s why so many of my previous blog posts, are typo filled, peppered with run-on sentences, and side thoughts cosseted in parentheses. I’d aways try to get my fingers to catch up with my thoughts (always an impossible task- better informed about this now, having learned about the hyperactivity of the minds that can come alongside ADHD), and then rush to hit publish, before I forgot. Sometimes I’d schedule it to be published on a certain day, sure I’d come back and make the necessary edits in the time between when I’d written the first draft and the date I’d scheduled it to go live, and inevitably I’d forget about the post’s existence, until I got a notification from WordPress.

Something I’ve been embracing the years since I last wrote here is the idea of perfect imperfection, allowing rooms for mistakes, and the mantra “done is better than perfect” and “good enough, move on”.

Holding myself to extremely high standards, is one thing, not allowing myself to progress due to minor imperfections is quite another.

So that’s it.

I’ll end here.

If you enjoyed this, thanks you for your time, I’d love to know what stood out for you, and your thoughts and insights in the comments.

With warmth,

Fine Words Weave