Regardless

Today I decided to write an extraordinary blog post - you won’t get these five minutes of your life back, so let’s make them count, shall we? I’ve been working on the 100 day project challenge. I’m on day 25 out of 100. I’m a quarter of the way to the end…meanwhile other participants are on day 36/100. I could feel defeated. I could stop. I could “give up.”

BUT WHY WOULD I?

This is my challenge to my self. 

There is no external pressure to do and make and create, and I decided at the start to approach it differently than other creators. Some take a photo each day, others choose a theme, still others explore a technique or medium weekly. I am finding creativity and creative inspiration and expression each day. I’m on post 25, but in reality, I’m focused on finding my creativity, my self in each day. As a mother I often lose my self.  I don’t mean I lose myself in the enjoyment of the moment, watching my kids giggle, or lose my self composure when they wrestle and scream at each other, though both do happen. I mean that I have days where I utterly ignore my self. I have had weeks where I bathed only once, where I didn’t read a book or a scrap of poetry, where I didn’t go outside just to breathe the air and feel the sun, where I didn’t have even one minute of quiet time to myself, where even a shower or the act of defecating is interrupted by children or husband. I am an extroverted introvert - I die inside if I don’t have time to be actually, completely, and totally alone to recharge. I don’t need hours or days alone, five to ten minutes a day with occasional artist date type “vacations” will do. One might never know it because I can be high energy and delighted to be around other people. What the world doesn’t see is the bone crushing exhaustion and need to look inward to recuperate.

So last night I made ñoquis (gnocchi for your Italian lovers out there). In the chaos that is my children’s screen time and transition into imaginative play, the inevitable fight over who will be setting the table - in the midst of it all - I took time to remember how I felt at 16 in Argentina, who that young woman was. I visited her for a time and drank in the textures, the fragrance of sautéing onions, carrots, celery, and garlic. I put down the mantle of mother/daughter/wife, and rolled out the little ñoquis to give them texture, dropping batches into salty, boiling water. The kids sidled up to the counter to see what I was doing and then skipped away. For a delicious moment, I bathed in the nostalgia of a special time and place in my past.

Remember to find yourself in the moment. Regardless.