Self-Care Summer
My younger daughter teases me that the Anne Lamott quotation on the bottom of my personal email, “Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you" is a tad hypocritical since it is hard for me to unplug and, harder still, to do nothing. I remind those on my leadership team how important it is to take real breaks from work. Last year, following the blurred boundaries of Covid, I made a school rule that we do not send email on weekends or after 8 p.m. on weekedaysunless it is a true emergency—and even then, it’s better to text.
I know the value of self-care, but I have a hard time living it. My older daughter and my son say I can’t sit still. They insist that I am forever hopping up because I remember that I left my needlepoint in the other room or I need a charger or I forgot to bring my water out to the porch. While their reminders sometimes feel like criticism, they are not wrong. Therefore, I have pronounced July my self-care summer. I am in Eagles Mere, the place that feels most like home. And here is the self-care regime to date—note, it took the first week of the month to make this list:
Watercoloring. I cannot draw for my life, but I love color, love watching colors merge and spill, so while I wait for my memoir to steep, in order to avoid the temptation of opening the memoir file on my laptop, I set up a watercolor station on the porch, complete with lots of watercolor mini-lessons on Instagram and two “How To” books. I find myself more awrd of the shape of leaves and flowers. I am looking more closely at the world when I walk our dogs. When my efforts look like a four-year old could do better, I remind myself that I am not trying to be an artist; rather, I’m playing with a new medium, one that is far away from words. Colors, shades, shapes, mistakes, serendipity, low stakes. This form of play feels very different from the way my mind typically works—sans language, verbs, sentence structure. And, one of my favorite writing mentors, Allison Williams, just posted a blog about her newfound love of watercolor, too, so I feel very on trend!
Chair Yoga. My sore hand and cranky knee mean I can’t do all I wish I could do, but I have discovered the huge variety of free chair yoga classes that exist on line. Stretching in the morning feels like a good way to breathe, center and release my neck. Like watercolor, it’s about the practice, not about perfection and when I dislike a particular class or the sound of a teacher’s voice, I simply make another selection the next day.
Walking the dogs early. The birds wake before dawn here on the mountain. Maisie and Diva wake by 5:30. Up we get, leaving Sclepi and Seth to snooze. I herd them to the backyard to wet, make the coffee, feed them, and then, fasten their leashes and take them down the hill to the lake and up through the village green. The other day, a doe eyed us and then darted into the woods. In the lake, a swimmer is accompanied by a canoe, the paddlers calling out muffled commands. Some mornings, we greet Opal, a shaggy black dog who loves to swim. It is a quiet lovely time.
Napping on the Porch. Twice over the holiday weekend, I found myself dozing on our little porch settee, the family around me, chattering.
Hummingbirds . Their little buzz draws my eye as they hover at the feeder I refilled for them yesterday—sugar and water only.
Novels. Reading first thing in the morning and throughout the day is the surest sign I am taking care of myself…and losing myself in stories.
Writing. I know my memoir needs time to percolate, steep, rise, rest, but, for fun, I am playing with turning a script I wrote a dozen years ago at ETC into a novel. Note: I know nothing about writing a novel. See commitment to watercolors above. I am also working on posting a new blog once a week—just for fun.
Lists. Sometimes, I add a task to my to-do list that I’ve already completed, just so I can check it off. It gives me a sense of accomplishment.
Housekeeping tasks like doing laundry feel less onerous on this month away from school. Perhaps that’s because the laundry room is right off the kitchen—no basement descent required. Cleaning up meals, too, feels less burdensome, especially when there are houseguests and grown children to help.
A change of rhythm is good medicine. Even on holiday, when I look out the window and see the school, it is hard not to think about deferred maintenance on our gorgeous old lady of a building; it is hard to turn off my whirring brain. Here, a few hours to the East, I am working hard to work less hard, to practice ever-elusive self-care.
