The first half of December breaks my brain. I know this. It happens every year. I blame it on the holiday shipping, and it is true that I ship out ten times more packages per day than at other times of the year. However it is also that I’m holding in my head all the holiday gift planning. I’m deciding whether or not to do Christmas cards or neighbor gifts. If I do them, I have to select recipients since I know and care about more people than I have the time or resources to give individual attention to.
This year I’m responding to some of the stress by doing a culling of belongings. Every thing I give away is a thing that I will never have to track, clean, or pay attention to again. And we really do need to pare back in advance of our hoped-for remodeling next year. (We desperately want to do the remodel, we don’t know if we’ll be able to fund it.) I’m working on carload #4 that is bound for thrift stores.
And then there is the emotional sorting. My oldest is moving home to stay. My second oldest is moving out and says he doesn’t think he’ll ever move back, which may be true. As part of his moving out, he’s doing some of the emotional push-pull on his parents that many kids do when they’re preparing to launch. It throws me off balance. And then off balance again when I realize that my third child is sinking into depression again, the kind that gently seeps the joy and interest out of everything. So she and I have to do something about that, but neither of us knows what yet. My youngest has one week to do enough work to prevent failing in one of his classes. His home school needs do not slack off even with holiday shipping. Though we’ve made a decision to take a break from all school things when on campus classes cease. We need a space free from tracking.
There are half a dozen blog entries I’ve partially written about the things summarized in that last paragraph. I can’t seem to clear enough head space to find the words. Instead I’m left with a day like today where I don’t want to waste the day, but I don’t have enough energy to dive into a project. I wish I did have that energy. There are so many projects that need done.
Hah. Moving from Auckland to Christchurch (1200km) in *fingers* 8 days.
We have 1 20″ shipping container to fill.
Trailers to dump: 6
Equivalent loads to hospice: 2
Equivalent loads to people: 2
Equivalent loads to dispose after moving: 3
Equivalent loads to buy after moving: 2
Also: Sell house, rent house while we look to buy house, organise schools for kids (You might recognise some traits, though less strongly), become self employed, organise insurance, company, accountant, etc.
Also: Try to close out 3 projects at work before I finish in 2 days.
Also: Try to START 2 projects at work even though I finish in 2 days. I did tell them I wanted to REDUCE my workload, honest I did.
Also: Xmas. My parents separated at Xmas, it was … unpleasant. And those traits? Me too, crowds especially are upsetting to me.
But: No home schooling. My nephew had that for a year to recover from his new entrants teacher 🙁 That can be tough indeed.
Huh. Apparently I can relate 🙂
I always say “I’m of peasant stock. We just keep doing the thing we’re doing. Eventually you die or things get better.”
(or for a brighter view, people overestimate what they can do today, and underestimate what they can do in a year)