Skip to main content

Did you miss me?

For those of you who actually follow my blog, you may have noticed that things were a bit quiet after last Monday's post. I actually did get a comment from someone wondering why my regular Friday blog was missing. 

Ok. So the comment was a text message from my mother. Does that count? 

I told you that she reads my blog.

Anyway...I suppose I could offer many excuses about why I didn't write much last week. I did have an additional post out there in the blog-o-sphere. (Thanks to Hey! That's My Hummus for publishing my guest-post.)

I could tell you that I was busy. 
I could tell you that I was tired. 
I was feeling uninspired. (wow. that's almost poetic.)

In truth, it was all of those things. And none of them.

In truth, television was my time-suck this weekend. 

Oh, I did get some things done. I exercised and visited the Ashland Strawberry Faire. Roger and I attended a neighbor's graduation party on Saturday as well as a wine tasting at The Caboose on Friday night. I caught up on some bills and paperwork, did a load of laundry, and cleaned the kitchen...but the thing that sucked me in to the vortex was...Studio 60.


It started Friday night. I was trying to sleep and my monthly bout of insomnia (I swear it happens about every 4-6 weeks) seemed to be rearing its ugly head. I should have been tired but I just wasn't. I wandered to the Netflix queue and found the witty Aaron Sorkin creation waiting to be viewed. Before I finally fell asleep, I had watched the first three episodes.  Before the weekend ended, I had watched all twenty-two. 

Yep. 22 hours of television in one weekend.*
(*Ok...technically...if you realize that they are 45 minute episodes, it was really 16.5 hours of TV. That's better, right?)

I had seen the series before. When it originally aired in 2005, it was part of my personal Must-See lineup.  I've been a Sorkin groupie since West Wing and I totally dig the smart repartee, creative storytelling, and incredible talent that seems to embody every television show (or movie) in which he invests his time. Entertainment Weekly's "showbituary" of Studio 60 encapsulated the show by citing how it "delivered topical jokes that were like New Yorker articles with punchlines tacked on."

Yep, I got sucked in to the vortex of television for one weekend and I have no regrets. 
My Type-A personality is learning to be ok with not running at full throttle 24/7. 
I'm learning how to relax and I'm learning how to let go. I'm learning how to not say "yes" to everything that crosses my path.  I'm finding that I can still accomplish many things and still be ok at the end of a weekend where I haven't accomplished everything. I'm 35 years old and I'm still learning.   

For me, it can be a challenge to learn how to relax. 
It's all part of my endless pursuit of balance. 

How do you look for balance in your life?
 
Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

The Edge of Seventeen

It's that time of year when the blog musings center on my grief journey. Every year, it seems like we are busy with end-of-the-year school activities and the start of summer, planning vacations, and then (kablam)...it's almost July 9.  Grief is funny. Grief is weird. I remember very early after Charlotte died, I watched the movie Rabbit Hole.  There's an amazingly poignant scene where Nicole Kidman's character is talking with another woman who lost a child over 10 years before (played by Dianne Wiest). She talks about grief being like a brick in your pocket. It never goes away. Sometimes you can even forget it's there. But it comes back and makes its presence known from time to time. And (she says) "it's what you have of them."    I probably did not fully realize then what a powerful and true analogy that is. As time goes on, our grief changes. Yet, it is always there on the edge of things. It sits in that pocket and sometimes makes itself known.  This
Read more

Tis the Season for Leaks

Now that we've had a few posts to settle in with one another, let's get personal, shall we?   It's almost an understatement to say that this has been a difficult year.  The last few weeks, especially, brought back a flood of memories.  This time last year, we were in the home stretch .   We were watching our daughter die.  I have spent the weeks since Thanksgiving thinking of our final days with her.  I miss her terribly.  I miss her laugh and her smile and her stories.  I cry a lot.   This is going to sound funny but I don't cry the way I used too.  In the past, if I got upset, you would KNOW that I was upset.  Now, it just kind of leaks out.  I'll be sitting somewhere: waiting in line at the store, working, driving in my car....and the tears just start to flow.  I don't even necessarily "break down" and sob.  I just leak.   Anything can trigger the leak.  Usually it's a memory of Charlotte.  Sometimes I'm reminded of a child or a family i
Read more

Bittersweet Sixteen

I think about Charlotte every single day. However, this time of year, I'm flooded with all kinds of memories as we commemorate the anniversary of her birth. This year feels like a bit of a milestone. Sixteen.  If cancer had not taken her life back in 2010, I have a feeling I would be planning a massive birthday celebration this year. 16 always feels like a landmark year in someone's life.  I have been thinking a great deal about the last birthday party we had for Charlotte in 2009. We didn't know it at the time, but we were halfway through her treatment journey. We had been through three major brain surgeries and a few rounds of inpatient chemotherapy. Treatments were not going well. In fact, right after her birthday, we would make the trip to Houston, Texas where we would settle in for about 10 weeks of proton beam radiation treatments and a new customized chemotherapy protocol. This was the unspoken "last chance option" to beat that aggressive brain tumor into
Read more