Remember how excited I was to fling schedules to the wind and experience life summer style: no deadlines, no structured activities?
I changed my mind. A certain amount of freedom and spontaneity are great, but a whole lot of flying by the seat of your pants makes for a wee bit of chaos. . . or a lot. Sometimes that is great fun, but sometimes I just need to be able to plan. I am, after all, a notorious list maker. Inevitably, what happens is summer flies by and I suddenly wonder what the heck I have been doing. I look at my summer to do list and think, "I know I've done stuff, but it ain't on this list!"
Plus the kids get all weird on me. They don't like it when I suddenly ask them to do some simple tasks, like practice their piano, or some crazy other thing, like quit staring at a computer and try reading a book--or *gasp* go outside and play. What ever happened to kids who played outside all summer? (of course we HAVE had very unsummer-like weather of late, all summer actually, with the exception of that one week when it was around 90 degrees) And bed times are apparently non-existent in summer (but on the upside, mornings are quiet around here).
And I sure haven't been writing--not even on this blog (as the date of the previous post attests).
Through all the craziness I have come to a conclusion:
I need a schedule. And deadlines.
I am clearly not great with the self-imposed variety of deadlines either. I need people waiting on me to get it done already or else. I seem to recall three distance classes that gave me six months to do the class, with no deadlines along the way. I paid to extend all three.
I need LOTS of deadlines--for each step along the way.
My wall of shame is not working, and I figured out why: It's overwhelming. And it has no deadlines. "Update digital contact info" has been on the list for over six months (I have piles of paper with addresses and such in a folder that I want on my computer and cell phone). I suddenly wondered why it was on my long term goal list and not my daily to do list. . . so I put it there yesterday and less than an hour later I crossed it off the list. Done.
I need little goals and daily schedules that head in the direction of my bigger goals, and so do my kids. And my husband for that matter. The chaos has been driving him batty lately.
I don't think I am ready for school to start yet, but I think my first goal is to work on making goals and setting schedules.
Summer can be fun in an orderly fashion--I am sure of it. Because after a couple months of wingin' it I have discovered something else:
I am not as free-spirited as I thought I was!
How do you structure your summer?
2 comments:
We are sooo kindred spirits in this regard. I have to schedule in "time to be spontaneous" :). I have been able to get my kids to go out--a lot even--but only if they have friends here, which only adds to the mess and chaos. I have to even go and clean up the backyard after them now, which kind of defeats the purpose of keeping them out of the house so I'm not having to pick it up a bajillion times a day.
Anyhow, I know it will be short lived. And as soon as I absolutely can't stand a minute more of unstructured time, it will go and get all structured on me again.
Hang in there :)
Oh, how I fight that battle too.
But I do make a calendar at the beginning of summer with all the things we want to do - Monday is free play day, Tues is free movie or field trip day, Wed is library day, Thur is field trip day and Friday is beach day. Of course, every week the schedule seems to change. Or this summer, the sun never comes out (which I am not liking) and cold beach days are not fun. I wish I could send the kids outside all day, but our patio isn't big enough to entertain them for that long.
I love the laziness of summer with no real timelines, but I agree, I'm not getting much done either. Can you tell from the date on my blog? Schedules will be back soon.
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