Making Space
On my kitchen wall I keep the family calendar. It is where I coordinate all the events of our lives so that I don’t forget any of them. Each family member has a different color of pen, so I can tell at a glance who is affected by the note. For the past month all of the days have been filled with rainbow scrawls written in tiny letters to fit around the other things. For the past month there has not been a single day with nothing written on it.
I also have a planner. It is correlated with the calendar on the wall. In the planner is the minutiae of task lists and errands and chores. All the events from the calendar are there, along with reminders to do laundry and visit the post office. Each day gets a whole page of the planner. For the past month all of the days have been filled with notes and lists to check off. Each day I check of 3/4 of the things on the list. Then I turn the page and transfer the incomplete things onto the next page. The next page is usually already full and the incomplete tasks have to squeeze around the things already there. None of the past month’s pages are empty.
For the past month my life has had no spaces. We run from busy task-filled weeks, into busy event-filled weekends. There have been few spaces to pause, take stock, and breathe. The one exception is the retreat I did last weekend. It made me realize what I have been missing. I’ve been missing days, hours that have no check boxes associated with them. I’ve been missing doing things just because I want to rather than because they need done.
My state of mind was clearly illustrated by my computer desktop. I’m in the habit of leaving things I’ll need around the edges of the screen. It keeps them where I will not forget them. But the shortcuts and files and folders begin to accumulate and the space in the center gets smaller and smaller. This also manifests in my house which has been accumulating clutter. I have not had the space to look around and see what needs done. Things only get done if they are on the To Do list. And even if they’re on the To Do list, they only get done if they manage to seem more important than everything else there. Things like sorting the non-legos out of the lego bin don’t even register as important until the bin is so choked with toys that the kids haven’t been able to use it for weeks.
My retreat and this week have made me realize that I need to defend the blank spaces on my calendar with vigor. Next month has lots of empty days. I really need to keep some of them empty. I need to make sure that each day has an hour where I’m not required to be efficient. One hour out of the day where I can do something that is not in my planner or on the calendar.
I need to make space in my life.