Making Time

I have had a few days away from making and discovering myself. In the past I would have felt very bad about the fact that I wasn’t making the most of my time. I would have done a lot of carping and criticising myself for slacking off. I have always managed to find ways to make most things I do wrong or in some way sub-par. I am slowly trying to change that.

Everything that matters always seems to get done and it has never been because I have always found the time to put myself down about any of it. I’ve never enjoyed sport or any kind of competition so I’m not entirely sure why I have always felt the need to live my life as if it was a test or a race. I have decided to see what happens if I just treat my life as if it were more of a wander. I was going to use the word adventure but I’m not entirely wedded to the idea of thrills anymore. I’m more built for a nice cup of tea and a bun. Possibly sitting on a bench in the sun, being silly for a bit.

The more that happens in my life, the more I realise what’s important to me. It’s not a surprising revelation. It’s just a reinforcement of the obvious. Spending time with the people I love, my family and my chosen family, my friends and my bloody stupid animals. It’s the myriad small things that connect us that are increasingly important to me. Those shared moments that form the bonds that lift us when we can’t lift ourselves any more. It’s not really about grand gestures, although they are marvellous from time to time. It’s about all the stuff that say I love you without fanfare. The countless tiny moments of care and thought that knit us together.

It’s also about making time to connect with the things in me that I love and to honour them. That’s about learning not to put my own needs last and/or apologise for having them. It’s about making time for myself before whatever I want becomes a desperate need, or an illness or a burning resentment. It’s about allowing myself to be ok about the things I can’t do and accept them rather than use them as weapons to hurt myself. And it’s about celebrating the things that I can do and not apologising for them or downplaying them.

I’ve been good at recognising the power of my family and friends and the love that I am blessed with. I’ve been less good at the stuff to do with myself. It’s time to redress that balance, but in a new way. It’s time to stop letting the fear of failure push me to hurtle through every challenge at top speed. It’s time to get curious about what it might be like to slow down and nourish myself and wander about a bit. Sometimes it’s only by wandering off the beaten path that you find that there are other ways to get where you want to go. It seems like it might finally be time to make time for myself.