Wonder if there’s any groups of people who feels this high level of anxiety of having old normal school life back in our life.
I know I have been screaming pretty loudly about how school closure costs a lot to many aspects of the children’s life, now when it finally opens again, it turns out has its own cost too.
Peaceful morning replaced by morning rush, long drive, and dealing with traffic jam.
The anxiety about sending back the little girl to school is more of how she would deal with her peers than the healthy and safety reason. Of course, they matter. But, with every precautions that have been taken, guess we could just trust the school and ask for Allah protection about the decision.
But then, she has to do what she has to do. I just hope she will meet the kind ones that would accept and be happy playing with her.
When I thought leaving the little girl at school is the most anxious thing to do. It turned out, having plenty of free time causes even more anxieties!
Freedom and free time without proper plan is more frightening than having tight schedule. That’s why I mostly plan my day 7 days a week. Not knowing what to do next always gives certain helplessness feeling inside.
Staying at home suits me most. But, there are times when I miss being a bit ‘busier’ to certain degree. The problem is I have plenty of requirements what kind of busy I want to sign up.
One of the reasons why I quitted full time job 12 years ago was because I started realizing time is the commodity that you couldn’t replace (have a draft about this but still can’t continue after weeks).
That was the first time I got the magic words inside my head “there should be more life than this”. This referred to spending entire Monday to Friday working and went home exhausted and had no energy to do other thing. What made me survive was because I had dreams to achieve. Thus, I worked also on Saturday and Sunday. I believe, the very first thing you should possess to achieve any dreams is not intangible thing like spirit or grit, but money. Then, no other way than working 7 days a week.
But, the situation is totally different now. I am more than lucky to be able to have a choice to stay at home with the little girl without worrying about food, rent, or even any other expenses, for now.
There are times when it was so hard till I promised my self I had no other space for anything else. But, there were also times when I had handful of free time till I thought I should be more useful than this.
When I seem to have clear schedule to the smallest detail for the little girl, I struggle a lot to have one for me.
During easy days, when the little girl stuff is done, I fell into a trap of doing mindless scrolling here and there. Pretty lucky there is a tiny part inside the head that rings the alarm and told myself to get my butt out of the couch and start functioning. My day begins at the end of a tidy home and clear sink. At the beginning of this year, I even set a daily reminder how much time I should spend daily watching people’s life in social media.
The biggest enemy is indeed inside yourself.
To say I am totally without any works to do is indeed not true. But, those sometimes feel inadequate to keep me ‘busy’. The thing is the free time is not something that consistently available. Sometimes I have it, many times I don’t. So, it is quite tricky to have another responsibility that won’t cause trouble with the ones that I have signed up before. Although fitting in to those requirements is quite impossible, I still keep trying to find one, still without deadline.
This period reminded me of one period that I had been through. The period before Paris happened. The period of too hopeless to be hopeful (because there seemed no way to get there), yet too scared to give up.
These days I feel like replaying U2 song all the time inside my head,
“I still haven’t found what I am looking for”.
But, Steve Jobs said,
“Keep looking, don’t settle”.
Then, I will.
It felt so incredible to be finally able to push the publish button for this post that had been staying on the draft folders for months.
A Penny for My Pensieve 