Motivations and Abundance
This time of year is always one of abundance. In addition to our garden, which is pumping out zucchini faster than I can cook it, there’s also an abundance of time, of sun, of fun, of laughter. It’s a tightly held secret, but July, August, and September in the Pacific Northwest are just about perfect. Eighty degree days are just right for swimming in the many lakes and streams, and the evenings drop down into the sixties so any house without air conditioning has a chance to cool off for sleeping. There’s no humidity so any spot in the shade is a refuge and the sun can beat down without feeling sticky or muggy.
We also find ourselves with an abundance of space. Our house, which can feel cramped in the rainy season, has the benefit of a lot of pleasant outdoor spaces. When we all get sick of each other, my kids find some cozy spot in the treehouse or trampoline and I escape to the garden and we all get a little break.
That’s what we’ve needed, after all. A little break. A break from all the extras - from the extracurriculars and extra homework and extraordinary schedule it feels like we keep. Instead, we’ve been able to take walks after dinner and have long conversations over bowls of frozen blueberries from the UPick place. I’ve missed this pace. I didn’t even know it was what I missed, but I missed it.
Every day, after Forrest’s work day is done, I sneak into our bedroom to write and he takes over - they go down to the lake to swim or work on some house project or he cooks dinner while the girls entertain themselves. And weirdly, I find those short hours more productive than the 7-3 schedule I get when school is in session. Every year, I wonder how this could be? How am I writing more and better in these stolen hours than I do when the days stretch out before me, house feeling too quiet without the laughter and bickering?
Maybe it’s that abundance. Because all I need to do today is write. There’s no sports practice to get them to or homework to talk over, or even appointments that need to be scheduled. It’s summer. I have two jobs - keep up with my kids and keep up with my book. And those are the two jobs I love most. It’s easy to find the motivation to do the things I love.
I’ve spent a lot of time over the last year coming to the understanding that just because I’m good at something, that doesn’t mean I love or even like to do it. You might be thinking, “Of course it doesn’t mean that. How do you not know what you like to do?” But it’s not as simple as that, is it? Because I like to be good at things. I like feeling like I’m good at things. I like people telling me that I’m good at things. And if I’m not very, very thoughtful about the difference between liking to be good at things and liking the things I’m good at, it’s easy to conflate the two. If I walk too far down that path, I end up with a life where all I do is check things off a to do list and try to pretend that satisfaction is the same as joy.
They’re not the same. Not even close. But it isn’t until I had the space and time to think about what I actually enjoyed doing that I learned one really crucial lesson. If the only happiness I get from doing something is the feeling I get when I check it off the list, then I had better have a damn good reason for doing it. And there are lots of reasons to do things I don’t like - taking care of my health, keeping our house from devolving into chaos, making sure that my kids grow up to be reasonably well-adjusted human beings. But as I age, as I have less energy, I need to know those reasons.
Because unlike during the summer, when time stretches endlessly before me, fall will come and with it, those familiar rhythms and routines. And when that schedule fills back up again, I don’t want to waste a single minute of it.
