Nearly there: the last week of the school holidays - seven days to go!
The husband returned to work today, although in reality, for him, most of the weekend was a slow-motion anticipation of the dreaded event. The house is in complete squalor, but there seems very little point in devoting energy to something that will just require redoing very shortly. And redoing over and over again.
More worryingly 'my desk' is in absolute disarray too. 'My desk' is actually a metaphor for my mental/psychological/intellectual self. I am surrounded by both pressing tasks (an upcoming assignment) and half-finished projects that I embarked on enthusiastically enough at the time. All fall down before the terrible sense of inertia that I am seized with.
I know that I should meet up with the reading group tomorrow, but I really don't think I can be bothered to organise the children and haul myself thirty miles for something that I am, in truth, only an occasional and peripheral member of. (Don't bother me with the 'incorrect' syntax of that sentence: I consider Webster a complete arse)
I should (
really should) invite my daughter's friend around for a reciprocal day of well thought out play and social opportunity - but I lack the energy to do so.
When I see my childrens' bright and lovely faces, I despise myself for being such a poor excuse for a mother, and yet more and more I come to understand my own mother's terminal frustration with her life. Her tense boredom and unhappiness stems from an intelligent and creative personality that was never given the opportunity to thrive and stretch itself, other than in a series of short-lived financially controlled, 'approved' hobbies/handicrafts/pastimes. Being a woman of her time (financially subjugated), demanding more of her life was never an option. Even now, when I suggest that something like the OU might give her a sense of achievement and purpose, she is reluctant to embark on something that might upset the status quo i.e. my father not getting his tea on time.
She, like me, needs intellectual involvement to prevent festering, a toxic introspection that robs the personality of energy, optimism and good will.
It is quite true: if you want something doing, give it to a busy person - they are the ones with the energy already in motion that will see a task through. An unengaged person must first of all overcome the moment of inertia: the busy one hits the ground running.
And so it is my goal today to get the wheels on this particular wagon rolling. Experience has taught me what I must do to achieve this: DO ANYTHING!
Activity breeds energy, energy begets energy, energy means achievement, achievement means happiness. Ergo, activity = happiness.
I am off to sweep the floor.
It does occur to me that I really need to set up another blog: this one has become hijacked by personal reflections, which although it is a useful exercise in thinking stuff through, was not really what I set out to do!
