Four minutes until 9 PM and I am sitting in my library waiting for my youngest to come home. There are a few things to reflect on here. For one I have reached a point where I am so disconnected from my kids practices that he comes home and often even shows up without me. I call that progress. He’s more likely to call that disinterest. My kids are used to a certain level of involvement from me, and by me stepping back a little it feels like they feel like I am virtually detached from their lives.
This is not true.
In truth I feel like they are used to seeing me one way and in one phase of their existence. I’ve coached them all at various points in time and for the first time in their lives I am not coaching a single one. That time freed was meant to give me time and space to be a writer, but it hasn’t really been that way at all. That time and space is largely wasted, still devoted to helping the kids in some other fashion, or consumed by mundane tasks. I want to be able to call it a shift that allows me to to spend the time I would have otherwise spent on those menial tasks on writing but I just feel like I’m struggling with the guilt of not being there for them every waking moment and am, as a result, wasting the time I have trying to make up for the time not being spent on them.
What I need to do is get back to caring about myself as much as I do about seeing them succeed. This is another case of easier said then done. Whenever I focus on self betterment something rushes into that action void to claim my time and brain cycles. Perhaps the first step is to not look at that time as an action void. Then it might not invite such behavior.
Baby Steps.