Dinnerdisheshomeworkreading

Reading my old blogs recently brings me back to Sisyphus feeling in 2020 or 2021 when I wrote it, but also back to 2016 or 2013 (from where some of the blog posts originated as I re-read earlier journals.) When will I learn not just to recognize the rush, but to do something about it?

Today, I began, as Sarah Susanka has it, to perforate my day with mini-pauses.  For instance, when I arrive in my car at work, I don't leap out, but I stop, and take three very slow breaths, trying to "drop in" mindfully for 3 in a row.

The first one, in the morning, makes me think of being pulled from one "to do" to the next. Image of Chaplin in Modern Times.  The in between places - the walk from the car - I usually consider "wasted time" in between events. 

Another one, again in the parking lot after a DCLT meeting at Hinsdale South, Was thinking this afternoon of the feeling of no one will miss me. No one knows that I’m not even here (between HC and HS) waiting in the warm car for just a couple minutes 

Planning for pauses.  At 7:23 this evening- thinking of how much time I have until 8 when I’ll start reading - and I'm thinking that I want to work a 3-min break before and after I start (between dishes and HW).  I'm planning the pauses, rather than booking everything back to back.... dinner, dishes, HW, reading. Dinnerdisheshomeworkreading.  

The pauses are not "check social media" time.

I feel like I did a blog entry a few years back -- during COVID -- on "taking a break" in a Zoom meeting, where that break time was filled with running to the bathroom and checking email (or both!). Even during COVID, the event that should have forced us to take a break.