It’s a strange old time at the moment. An impending house move after being settled for 6 years, but no real idea of when it might happen, is definitely causing fairly constant low-level anxiety. We are buying brand new, and apparently being able to indicate or confirm a finish date any time before 10 days before completion is an impossibility! Or even a finish ‘window’. At this stage I’d be happy with ‘between this date and this date’. But no, apparently not. So the best we’ve got is fingers crossed and hope that it will all be done and we’ll be in before our deadline of end of June. I know it’s like that with most house moves, but I had hoped that the project might be running to some kind of schedule. Perhaps I’ll try that approach with my next client project – yep, I know exactly how that would go down!
Needless to say, this means there’s a fair bit to do. The new house is smaller than the current one, so we’re being forced to declutter, which is no bad thing. But it feels like the mixture of the usual household chores, weekend routines and the additional chucking, sorting and getting ready for packing has meant that my weekends have been taken up with nothing but that, and trying to grab some rest before another week at (brilliantly) busy work. And a girl still has to fit in MotoGp and WSB watching around all of that!
I realised a couple of weekends ago that it was starting to get me down a bit. So, we made a conscious change and already on weekend 2 it feels great. Sunday morning is now ‘do what you want to do’ time. Not ‘do what you have to do/feel you should do’ time. For himself, that means going out cycling and not having to worry about being back by a certain time or feeling guilty about not doing house stuff. For me, it means coffee, a magazine, seeing my Mum and Dad, writing, reading or anything I want. Definitely no life admin, no work, no doing the washing, tidying up or going to the supermarket. Between 7 and 1 on a Sunday that can all wait, whatever state it’s in.
It’s weirdly liberating to be so organised. But it doesn’t feel like a rule, it feels like claiming back some balance. Being able to breathe a bit deeper and losing the guilty feeling that I should be doing something ‘productive’. It feels a lot more ‘in the moment’ and it means that I’m guarding against all those things I love doing becoming a chore that have to be fitted in around life’s commitments and routines.
Work in progress…but it feels good so far.
