Too many ideas, not enough time

February 1st today!! We’re 1/12 of the way through 2022. Crazy.

“It’s a long month….”

You often hear people lament that January is a long, slow month- it’s the thick of winter, the holidays are over, everyone is trying to implement their “New Year’s resolutions”….it’s kind of like one big, long Monday all month long. And in fairness, it technically IS one of the the longest months (31 days!).

I can’t say I felt that way this year, really, though. It may be because Ivan and I travelled for a little chunk of it. I find that whenever I go on vacation, that time period absolutely FLIES by. (Not necessarily the vacation itself, but when I get home, it feels like those travel dates were erased from my normal life calendar, if that makes sense? And that we just skipped ahead a week or two or whatever.)

I assume it’s just because if I’m traveling, I’m not doing my “everyday” activities, or, obviously not working toward any goals, “getting things done”, etc. Which is totally fine! But I still always tend to feel an odd sense of a time warp sensation during months when we travel.

Plus- travel does inevitably = extra stuff to do. Even the quickest, lightest trip, like our recent Mexico trip, still required some effort to PACK, buy a few things, unpack, laundry, put stuff away, etc. etc.

So, unlike sentiments I have seen floating around the internet from other people, I do NOT personally feel that January has been a sloggy draggy month. I’m more in the camp of, “Whoa, it’s February already?!”

I feel like I still haven’t quite had a chance to get fully organized for the new year!!! This has sort of been my attitude:

I’m not sure I’ve fully been able to catch my breath since we got home from Mexico (although I did do a little “life planning” in Mexico- such as my 22 for 2022 list!).

Blog ideas

I have a million topics in my head I want to share and get out on paper. But unfortunately, blogging is very much “just a hobby” for me- not a paid job in any capacity.

So, I have been trying to stay aware of the fact that it really can eat up quite a lot of time, if I’m not careful….which isn’t necessarily bad, but if I’m feeling busy or overwhelmed, I do need to make sure to look at ALL the places my time goes. Including time writing here, or also reading/commenting on other blogs.

It’s time well spent, YES, absolutely! But you know the saying, “too much of anything (can be) a bad thing.” (I edited that a little bit. 🙂 )

I’ve recently been reading some other threads where people are experiencing a lot of overwhelm in their lives and can’t figure out why. From a distance, it can be very obvious when others are clearly just trying to cram too much in, or hold themselves to unrealistic (and frankly unnecessary) expectations. It can be harder to recognize in our own lives, though!

Because I love writing here- it’s just really fun!- it can be easy for me to prioritize “blog time” over almost anything else. And I do definitely plan to keep doing it! But my friend over at Real Life in Utopia inspired me recently with her very relaxed attitude about missing a stretch of updating her blog. She said, after a busy period, “I like blogging and I did have a few topics in my mind but it’s not my priority, so here we are.”

I don’t know exactly what she was thinking, of course, but I took it as a calm statement, said while shrugging her shoulders, “Oh well! No biggie. Just didn’t really have time…will resume when I get a free moment.” I liked that.

Like I said, I do have a bunch of things I want to write about. I’ll get to them eventually! Some of them include:

• my 22 for 2022 list!
• my “word of the year” (I know, these are new years topics…like I said, February is the new January 😉 )
• some thoughts on a couple books I’ve read lately
• my 2022 quarterly book list! (recently sketched out)
• I AM going to finish my Mexico trip recaps!
• catch up/ wrap up my gratitude challenge
• some planner related stuff/ few tweaks I’ve made to my system this year

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Weekend

Changing gears- we had a very fun-filled weekend! It had a lot going on, but it was a good one.

Saturday:

• the boys’ first in-person piano recital in over 2 years!! (And, Asher’s last recital. Cue tears from me….wahhhhh……). He did amazing and I’m so proud. Ethan, as usual, played gorgeously as well. He says he gets a bit nervous but you’d never tell- he’s always cool as a cucumber and rarely misses a note when he performs.

• One of Asher’s pieces was Billy Joel’s Piano Man, an obvious crowd favorite. 😉 His other piece was 12 Days of Christmas (yes, Christmas is over, but he just really liked that one.) His teacher knew he likes art a lot, so she asked him to create a visual to accompany his piece. He drew each of these by hand himself!

• We went to Culver’s for a quick lunch after the recital. The boys were in good moods and talkative. We somehow ended up taking silly pictures of each other while we waited for our food, like candid photo style. I actually love a few of them, though!

• Ethan had a basketball game in the afternoon. (tough, close loss!)
• Saturday night we got a pizza and watched Titanic!

Something made me think of that movie the other day, out of the blue. It’s been YEARS since I’ve seen it. It’s really a fabulous movie!!

The boys know all about the Titanic- we read a bunch of books about it when they were younger. It’s rated PG-13, but my only concerns were the “scene in the car”, if you recall…and the scene where Jack draws Rose in a, um, suggestive position. We just fast forwarded through the car scene. Much of the rest of it is intense/ dramatic- but the boys are plenty old to handle that.

They really liked it, although Ethan seemed a bit too impacted by it, maybe. Afterwards he kept saying how it was so sad. And how it would have been so terrifying for those people! Yep, and yep. 😦 It is still a wonderfully done movie, in my opinion. I was happy to watch it again after all this time.

Sunday:

• Up early for our home swim meet! I was at the pool by 7:30 helping set up. The meet was quick and easy though and done by ~12:00 or so.
• I was tired by Sunday afternoon. We ran a few errands, and then mostly just watched football all afternoon/evening (I simultaneously worked on my photo project on my laptop.) What great playoff games!! Those comebacks were very, very exciting. We were happy with the outcome- Ivan and I were rooting for a Bengals/ Rams Superbowl this time. 🙂

Daily Gratitude:

I am grateful for people that you can pay to change your vehicle’s oil so you don’t have to. 🙂 Taking my van in for an oil change this morning.