Boring isn’t so bad

By: Samantha S. Daviss

I used to get very anxious when I had nothing to do. When my life was mundane, or when nothing was on the calendar for a while. But now I absolutely long for those days. Between work, kids, and life I feel like I haven’t had a moment to breathe in forever.

I don’t want to brag or anything, but I very rarely get behind on my laundry. And since we have moved, I feel like all I ever do now is laundry. I mean, seriously, did our house start producing clothes? I don’t remember ever having this much to wash. I have never had piles of laundry on the floor of my laundry room, but now I do. Except they are more like mini mountains, not piles.

The past few months of our lives have been absolutely crazy. We moved into our new house in early fall. I started a new company, that started out slowly and has now taken off like gangbusters, in addition to my other full-time job. I managed to unpack every box we had, and then like two weeks later decorate the entire house for Christmas.

Then I took Christmas decorations down, and have now put up Valentine’s Day décor. In the mean time we have been running around for sports with the teen, a knee injury, so back and forth to the doctor we went. And the middle one is doing basketball as well, so we are traveling to his games all the time.

Plus, every once in a while we find another load of stuff that needs to be unboxed and put away in the house. I finally managed to create a hole in our garage for my car to pull in.

During all this we are dealing with getting used to teenage life, running around, and hanging out with friends. Plus, the next two boys becoming a year older and dealing with their school work and worries and woes.

And just around the corner is my big 4-0 birthday. So I am getting geared up for that and excited to travel and see friends that are also turning 40 this year. But for my 40^th, I wanted a new puppy, so I have added that to our chaotic household and life. But she has been great and wouldn’t trade her for the world.

And yet again, just the other day, we discovered another filled warehouse stall full of family photos for the walls of our new home. We knew all this was still in storage, but when you finally get settled and then realize you have more work to do, it’s frustrating.

In addition to that you have volunteer responsibilities, you have work obligations, you have meetings outside of work, plus you have to carve out some family time.

I am so ready for a bunch of blank squares on my calendar. I think I am mentally and emotionally drained from all the excitement the past four months. So to myself I say…if I ever get anxious again about some quiet down time, I might just lock myself in the closet.