No school….again

This photo is my most recent Instagram post.  We are on our third snow day.  That’s 5 days of kids being at home, people!!  Sometimes it’s just been my own three, which is daunting enough, but other times we have had a load of others.  And yes, sometimes mine have gone off.  Although it has never been at the same time.

I am a person who requires some time alone in my head.  This need for quiet, for moments of silence, a time for decompression, a time for ideas to float around and take root.  My husband understands this about me. My children, I think, know this.  But they do not understand it.  And as much as they think that I am the queen of “no”, the reality is that most of the time I will put aside what I am doing to tend to their needs (or whims, as the case may be). I have gotten used to my hours of silence while they are at school and this forced confinement is beginning to to feel constricting.

I tried to get to my yoga class this morning.  I drove around the gym parking lot three times before finally giving up. By that time the class had already started and I didn’t want to wait in the long line of cars, circling along with me, just to walk a treadmill. We all know how much I enjoy the treadmill.  I think everyone else has cabin fever and is trying to get out, plus half the spots are missing to snow piles.  I came home and tried a couple of times on the pull-up bar.  I am so close that (and I don’t want to get too excited or anything) I think that it may not take an entire year to get it accomplished.  I may have underestimated myself and need to increase the expectations on that goal.

I decided to take some pictures, hence the one above. I am also making headway on my reading challenge. I chose Walden because my journey includes changing my mindset about possessions.

I am a believer in the cluttered home = cluttered mind, which I learned about while applying Feng Shui to my house over the years.  And yet, I have not overcome the clutter.  While watching a video by my niece, Azalea, I learned about the KonMari method.  I was completely intrigued and after talking to her about what she thought of the process, I checked the book out from the library and set to work.  I made it through clothes and books pretty easily.  I am now on paper, paper I have been on for weeks, and on paper will I continue to be.  I am a list maker, an information gatherer, a visual learner, and a scraps of paper collector.  I can’t sit down and go through it all at once.  I do have a life outside of declutterer.  I am having a hard time making forward movements in these trapped days of winter, but I am making forward movement.  I love quotes and randomly came across this quote when I decided to begin a journey of self discovery.  It’s written on my whiteboard in the kitchen. No matter how many mistakes you make or how slowly you progress, you are still way ahead of everyone who isn’t trying – Tony Robbins.

I’m off to work on taming the paper monster.

Let your light shine!

Amy