A New Plan

It’s been a little hectic in Our Wee Family recently. We’ve been racing from one activity to the next, leaving very little time at home for relaxing and playing. Dance lessons, bible school, work commitments, appointments, family get-togethers and play dates have really taken a toll on us. The hard part is, we’ve opted in for these things. They’re commitments we like and purposely add to our calendars. But it’s too much. At the same time.

It affirms my early gut feeling about child activities – one at a time. When bible school and dance overlapped last week it created a monster of a child by 7 p.m. and a meltdown mommy. We couldn’t do it. Even if it was all fun – and actually very enriching, positive activities – it was simply too much all at once.

I find myself in a flurry of busyness that doesn’t really accomplish what I hope. You all know the feeling – go, go, go. But for what?

I must admit that much of the busyness in our family is spurred by me – the same person who’s ready to cry uncle. I’m a doer. I love to plan. I love to go. I love to experience, explore, learn, help and fix. I’ve never been described as laid back – there’s too much nervous energy and drive for that. And most of the time, I appreciate this characteristic of myself. But I need to be more careful about it’s dark side too.

It’s a little late for New Year’s resolutions, but I want to purposefully make 2010 a year of slow down. I think we’d all be a little happier if we had more time to simply be. There’s no reason to schlep the kids around in a flurry, when they’re happier playing with their toys downstairs or making art at the picnic table.

I have a few goals to kick off this new plan. I certainly don’t want to make myself more crazy with planning and goal setting, but clearly I need some concrete starting points.

1. Keep my planner tidy. And by this I don’t mean writing in perfect penmanship. I mean, I won’t cram every day full of activities and to-do lists. I’ll take the time to better prioritize.

2. Limit children’s activities to one at a time. I was tempted to sign Natalie up for dance this summer (for a special one-week session), only to realize it’s during the same week as swimming lessons. I promise I won’t do it. Dance will have to wait.

3. Limit weekend trips to one per month. This is going to be hard. We spent about 2/3 of last summer’s weekends traveling to see family and friends. It was wonderful, but also exhausting, and we missed all of the time we could have spent playing in the backyard, having barbecues and walking to the park. Already this month I scrapped a plan to finally get the kids up to Canada because we already have a North Dakota trip planned.

4. Read "The Happiness Project." I keep seeing this book by Gretchen Rubin whenever I’m on the Web – Twitter, Facebook, my RSS reader, e-mail. I get it. I can take the hint. I’ll order a copy. It’s about examining your life in terms of happiness and taking simple steps to make happiness a bigger priority. Sort of fits in well, don’t you think?

What are ways you cut back on your schedule to slow down? Share your thoughts.