I am having a very busy time of life right now: four kids at home; kid graduating high school; kid dealing with college decisions and orientation and needing to acquire supplies; kid finally going for their driver’s license; kid getting job at a summer camp and needing to acquire supplies; three kid birthdays in less than two weeks. All GOOD things, and yet I am not coping particularly well, I notice: lots of the BAD stress feelings.
I suspect it’s that the baseline stress right now with what’s going on in the country is SO BAD, that any busyness or excitement added INTO that stress just exhibits as More Negative Stress. I also think there’s a tipping point: everything can be WONDERFUL, but we can still handle only so many happy tasks in a day before we start to feel batty-eyed.
Additionally, things are not going well at my job right now. We’ve all been clinging on for dear life the last year or two, waiting for a new person in the top position, while an unqualified and inexperienced temporary replacement steers us wildly into one storm after another. The new person was found; the new person seems GREAT—and the new person is continuing to allow the temporary replacement to run everything. The new person’s philosophy is admirable: don’t show up and start changing things without first assessing the situation and getting a clear picture of how things are and how they should change. But it’s been almost six months, and the new person spends all their time in meetings off-site or behind a closed office door, so I don’t see how the new person is getting any sort of feel for how things are on the active floor—and, as I say, so far the new person is allowing the unqualified person to continue to steer us poorly/wildly. This too is keeping baseline stress levels higher and making it difficult for the HAPPY kind of busyness to feel happy.
Normally you know I love almost nothing more than shopping for college, shopping for a birthday, shopping for a new baby (there is a new baby in our extended family)—and instead it all feels like more urgent tasks to be checked off a list. Choosing wee footie sleepers, which is a rare treat and should be enjoyed for as long as possible, had to be RUSHED. And it doesn’t help that I am trying to avoid shopping at Target, trying to avoid Amazon. I will say that this past week (shopping for the twins’ birthdays after an unsuccessful experience shopping small for Henry’s birthday; shopping for a kid who suddenly got a summer-camp job that starts this weekend; shopping for a new baby) I have just gone ahead and used Amazon: sure, it’s run by an evil oligarch who supports our current terrible administration, but they have what I need and they will get it to me quickly. I know small businesses can’t compete with that, so I will not ask them to. (Target may be a lesser evil, but I care more about them feeling my timely wrath.)
This weekend is a busy one for many of us. I hope you all stay safe.
Hope things change for the better: the new person steps up and the kid -related stress fades into a nice summer. I am trying to ignore stress-y work feelings (So Many Deadlines AND also New Projects starting at the same time) and say to myself ‘its only work.’ AKA in the grand scheme of things, a work deadline doesn’t matter that much: I probably won’t count getting that report done on time as a life highlight. BUT still, its very Annoying. For my brain it is much harder to turn off the worry about the State of the Country. Indeed, stay safe everyone and stay strong.
As you are now a pro at sending kids off to college, could you do a round up post (and maybe source ideas from the fabulous commentariat here) about what things freshman really need and what they actually don’t need even though everyone says it’s important? I’m sending MAH BAYBEEEE off to college soon (she once wore the Swistle skirt there that’s still in your blog image!) andI have no idea what sorts of things she’ll actually need.
Yes – this. If/when your life calms down and you are looking for a post idea, I’d love to read your thoughts on this. Also, crowd-sourcing the wisdom of the commenters for what was needed/un-needed (and just general advice on the college experience) might be helpful.
Does second-hand/thrift shopping give you a similar thrill? It has never been my thing until recently, but there’s a certain sticking-it-to-the-man-ness that I am enjoying. I have a few things that I don’t NEED right now but would like to find (more technical fabric running shirts for my wife, plates that match our set, etc), and I enjoy the occasional super nuts bargain that I find. I’ve also been stocking up on very lightly used games and puzzles for the one million birthday parties my children get invited to every year. I do still shop at Amazon sometimes when it’s urgent, but I like that no oligarchs are benefiting from some of the less-time-sensitive purchases. I’ve got 3-4 new favorite t-shirts for super cheap too.
I’m sorry everything else sucks. I can only read/think about the state of our country so much before I have to stop for a while. My December has that frenetic too-much-fun feel to it because of all the birthdays and holidays slammed together, so I feel you on that and I hope it all eases soon.
It definitely DOES, at times when I am feeling less harried. I like to get beautiful glass vases there, usually only about a dollar each, and then use them when I give flowers, instead of spending $8-10 for even grocery store vases that aren’t as pretty. And Elizabeth just bought a TON of great stuff for camp there, including a pair of L.L. Bean hiking sneakers for like $8, but especially just the pile of shorts and t-shirts she got for about $2 each. One of the most fun shopping trips of my LIFE was when Elizabeth was about 10, and going away to summer camp, and there were all these warnings about clothes getting destroyed/lost—so we went to Goodwill and, in the prices of the time, found a complete summer camp wardrobe for $.50-$2/item. When the only requirement is that you don’t mind if it gets lost, it’s such a thrill to get an enormous pile of clothes for so little money!—and fun for both of us to choose things she wouldn’t normally choose.
We’ve also gotten some GREAT furniture there: all the chairs from our (consignment-store 1970s) big dark pine table have broken, one by one, so now we have a hodge-podge of chairs, many of them acquired at a ridiculous price such as $2. For a solid wood chair in great shape! And then the occasional super-nuts find, as you mention: things like a new-in-box crockpot for $5, when we actually needed a new crockpot; platters that go with my grandmother’s old china, $2; that kind of thing. (I still wish I’d paid the $20 for a gorgeous leather coat I found, great condition, but we were broke enough at the time that I felt I couldn’t do it; I WISH I HAD JUST DONE IT.) It’s such a lovely combination of saving money, keeping things out of landfills, treasure-hunting, and sticking it to the oligarchs!
Wow, that is a lot of things all at once, Swistle! Sometimes happy busy things can feel NOT happy because there is just so much going on. Sending you a big hug xoxoxo
Oh Swistle. It sounds happy and overwhelming and heartstring-tugging and stressful and like A Lot. The work stuff on its own – yuck. Especially when it’s ongoing and the solution isn’t solving anything (yet) – ugh. What a challenging season. Sending you love.
Yes, I have had that exact experience, minor stressors feeling unbearable and things that should be fun feeling like too much. When we were picking our youngest up from college last month, my wife suggested a visit to nearby amusement park, one I really like, but I just recoiled. It seemed like it would be so overstimulating and not fun at all. We opted to take a ferry to an island in Lake Erie instead and took a wildflower trail and went into a cave and a butterfly house and it was just what I wanted.
BTW, I appreciated the recent updates on the twins. I had been wondering about both of them.