I get up. I put the kettle on. I feed the cats. I nip to the facilities. I make tea. I check mail. I drink tea and think about the day. I get dressed. I get the Adorable Child out of bed. We ignore each other, aside from cuddles, whilst he wakes up properly. I make tea in the Wonderbag or just get it out to defrost, depending on what it is. I feed the child. I put the computer on. I go through the day, thinking it out ahead of me. We get shoes on. We got to school.
And thus it continues.
For today's Wednesday Words, (although I am fairly sure that it is Thursday, but as yet that is unconfirmed) I was thinking about habits.
The habits I have are the automatic ones that kept the child and I going after Rich died. They are the essentials. I am slowing trying to change them, to add in the things I need or want to do, like blog, like exercise, like clean the bathroom before it gets to the paw print covered midden that it is now. I am struggling. This leads me to my first quote.
“The only way we could remember would be by constant re-reading, for knowledge unused tends to drop out of mind. Knowledge used does not need to be remembered; practice forms habits and habits make memory unnecessary. The rule is nothing; the application is everything.”
― Henry Hazlitt, Thinking as a Science
It is only habit that reminded me to feed the child, clean his shoes, make sure he was read with, wash his clothes, all that kind of thing, in the Dark Days. I ran on autopilot. There are days I still do, when I am ill, when I am tired, when I am hurting from the post that still comes for him because the promises were not kept, although I still keep mine.
School however, is a place where I am breaking habits. It's not going down well. I am an affable kind of person. I live and let live. There are two people in the world that I would love a serious 'chat' with, and I wouldn't want to hurt them, just to get to the bottom of stuff. As the ICT Co-ordinator, I have let things slide sometimes. I have said, "Hey, get the results to me when you can." I've said "It's ok, don't worry, I'll do it for you." This leads me to my second quote.
“The soul grows into lovely habits as easily as into ugly ones, and the moment a life begins to blossom into beautiful words and deeds, that moment a new standard of conduct is established, and your eager neighbors look to you for a continuous manifestation of the good cheer, the sympathy, the ready wit, the comradeship, or the inspiration, you once showed yourself capable of. Bear figs for a season or two, and the world outside the orchard is very unwilling you should bear thistles.”
― Kate Douglas Wiggin, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm
I am asserting the new needs of the new curriculum, and I am dragging some of the staff, kicking and screaming, into the modern era. Some of it is because they don't like it that *I* am saying what should be done. *I* am nice. I don't insist. I don't nag. I understand that we are all stressed and not everyone loves ICT. Well, I do, but we've had two years to get to this point, and if you've chosen not to make the effort and leave it all for the last week, then that's your problem and they have noticed that I am no longer understanding, I am insisting, and I am reminding, again and again and again.
It's not going down well. Some people are not liking the thistles.
The last quote is my favourite.
“She liked the life she had. She loved habits. She craved a day with nothing in it, a long, quiet stretch of hours in the studio.”
― Ann Brashares, Sisterhood Everlasting
I've never heard of this person. I know that the time will come when I will have days with nothing in them. I don't want them to come too soon - I don't *crave* them that badly that I want the AC to leave home early, but a day of just sewing, knitting and reading? Who wouldn't want that? A day to make tea and think and rebuild myself some more? Yes. I want that.
More and more I feel myself coming back to me, the me that there was before the accident. More and more I can't believe some of the things I have let happen since the accident, things that my not-in-shock me would have railed against.
My choice is to let them go though. I don't want to get in to the habit of hating. I've seen people do it, and it consumes their whole lives. I do not want to think automatically "I don't like that person because......" and there is a remembered slight that I have warmed over until it is rotten and grown to twice its size with mould.
Life is too short. Itwillallbefine.
(Oh, and I checked. It's Thursday.)
