2.208. Things to Do

I have my children four out of the seven days of the week. By all accounts I should be looking for things to do with them, trying to slide myself into their young universe, and possibly scratching at the walls when things get to be too much. None of this is true. In truth we have a routine that is largely dominated by sports, which is to say we have a routine that is largely controlled by someone else’s schedule, which is to say we don’t actually have the kind of time I want with my kids.

School sports take a lot of time. As my eldest shifts into a high school mindset I am starting to recognize how little time I have left to eek out a life with him. With wrestling coming to a close the boys will be shifting into track and field mode. This will take us through April where they ought to get a break but will instead be deep into the 7 on 7 and 5 on 5 football seasons. Those give way to the hot days of summer, but only briefly. We begin to prep for our summer tackle football tourney, which begins in June. Then it will be time for basketball…

Except that is when I expect to pull the plug.

More and more I see in our interactions that this way of life, while fun, is unbalanced. I enjoy sports. I enjoyed being a coach for my kids, and I don’t shy away from the possibility of giving 5 on 5 flag football one last go round with the little one. However, the truth of it is there is not a balance between the sports and the quality home time where we sit and play games and watch movies and gather around the dinner table. We don’t have the sort of life that lends itself to memories of being home. We have routine. We have things to do when sometimes the best thing to have to do is absolutely nothing. I think that is the space in which lasting memories are made. Sure, they’ll remember the tournaments. They should also remember the Beyblading. They should also remember the time we all sat around trying to perfect the coolest way to roll to your feet (it is definitely this one. We figured out how to do it and it was super awesome).

So, the key here is to find balance and in that a deeper happiness that will last.

2.207:

I watched a dramatization of an alcoholic falling off the wagon. 546 days he lasted. It took a shift of epic proportions to bring him down. Real life is far more fragile. See, 207 or so days ago I broke. I shattered. I recognized that everything that I moved myself towards was hurtling away so fast that I didn’t have any chance to grab hold and pull back. So I let everything drop. Nearly a year later I am still trying to find parts of what I lost.

I lost my motivation. I lost my heart for the things I love. It wasn’t because of her. She may have been the catalyst for self reflection, but she was not to blame. Everything built to it.

So now I am in a space where I appreciate the most important things in my life more, but I also have lost a very vital part of my person–that iron will that allowed me to be so successful in my early life. Honestly, I don’t know how to get it back. In a sense I fell off my own will-wagon and I gotta find a way to get right.