too much

Today I spent hours trying to make sense of the snarl of information pertaining to my son's science pursuits. Between the many university options, the many routes to get there, and the many ways of getting to those routes, there are thousands of options. And I became overwhelmed. When my brain felt like it was the size of a pea, and I couldn't continue, I found myself near tears, and closed my eyes. When I opened them again I made a list of my current five jobs:

• homemaking (cooking, cleaning, organizing, shopping, book-keeping, etc.)
• the yard and garden (it's soil-preparation and sprouting season!)
• managing the kids' education (a complicated assortment of activities and prospects)
• my art career (currently 3 weeks out from an installation and performance in the city)
• my wilderness/art teaching career (a busy spring as usual)

What the hell?!

How did I get so many jobs?!

It suddenly hit me that my time, body and mind is stretched in so many directions that I can barely breathe. And yet... there isn't a single one of them I'm not passionate about. So, instead of falling asleep, which my body seemed to be heading for, and without any apparent solution to my situation, I made myself a cup of green tea, opened a tab to Youtube, and clicked something that looked distracting. This is what I watched:

OK... So actually I watched four videos of this beautiful woman cooking for her family. I couldn't stop watching her hands slowly squishing the food; her grand-children slowly cutting and peeling ingredients on the upright knife. Her food slowly cooking. Her great-grandchildren lazily enjoying the food she made. It was the slowness that captivated me. I am craving slowness.

What has happened to us? How is it that every hour of every day is packed full of plans and activity, so that, although the sun is shining on the bursting spring, we sit inside answering emails and planning our next moves, or, when necessary, rush out to use machines to turn the earth and fill it with food-production as quickly as possible? Why am I afraid to sit in the sun and watch the pond, for fear that someone will see me and think I'm lazy? Why, when I make dal, do I get the work done with the end of a big spoon in less than 1/2 an hour, and then rush off to accomplish other tasks while it cooks? Why do I plop it on my children's plates, consume my own, and find things to fill the time with if they don't finish quickly enough? How did I become afraid to enjoy the time spent cooking and eating?

And what am I doing to my children in leading them in this manic race? The lyrics to the 21 Pilots song my son often sings around the house these days are:

Wish we could turn back time

to the good old days

when our mama sang us to sleep

but now we're stressed out

What does that tell you about his generation and the life we're living?

I want to feel my food with my hands; I want to take a whole hour for dinner and not feel pressured to get moving. I want to spend twenty minutes just feeling the warm dirt and not worrying that the time is passing. I want to think more about life than about productivity. I want to think more about the present than about the future.

I don't know how to move forward to the life I imagine; none of the five jobs I have is something I can give up. This isn't a have-answers-will-share sort of post, it's just a yearning. I'm posting to my blog to help me think. Somehow something has to change, not just with me but with all of us and the way we've come to measure our worth by busy-ness.