The Spaces in Between

One of my favourite places to take a walk is in a wood.  A wood in summer, with the trees in full leaf can feel like there is hidden magic hidden round every corner, the sunlight shining in rays through the trees creating magical spots of light.  In the winter a wood feels more open but can still be dark as the daylight hours can often be cloudy and gloomy giving a wood an ethereal light.  The colours in the spring and autumn are always magnificent, the green haze in spring and the ever changing colour palette in autumn bringing a wood alive in more ways than one .  The spaces in a wood, the gaps between the trees are what makes a wood for me, it throws the light around giving it a special magic that changes with the seasons, a wood with trees close together is a dark foreboding place and not one I particularly like exploring.

My life has finally gone back to be being nearly as full and busy as it was pre-Covid, it has been a slow build up.  I loved the quiet that lockdowns bought me.  I enjoyed the stillness and slowing down.  I thought I could maintain that but it was not to be, I am my own worst enemy for taking on things that fill my time.  I don't, however; regret what I have taken on, the paid work, the volunteering it fills me up as much as it fills my time.  I thrive on having things to do, I don't long for a time when I have nothing to do, I prefer to direct my energies elsewhere.  What I have taken from the time of Covid is how very important time for stillness and rest are and however busy I might be I find time for this each and every day.  It does mean that some things, like writing posts on this blog get shelved for a while but that is how it has to be.  I am still writing it just takes me so much longer to get a post to the point of being able to post it, I am rather enjoying the mediative and slow process of taking time to write a post, dipping in and out as time allows.  I feel sure that it will improve my writing, time will tell.

When life is busier and there is more going on, there is so much more I could share and write about that ends up drifting by and remains in my memory without being recorded.  Life slips along wrapped up in food preparation, housework, planning, creating, spending time with friends, family, fund-raising, working and then every now and then I show up here to share snippets, the breadcrumbs that I have yet to sweep up and forget about.  It is so easy to paint a particular picture, the parts that we are comfortable sharing or the image that we want to create of ourselves online, we read about the lives of others through the lens of our own experiences which are often so different from the writers.  I am guilty of making it appear that my life is ticking along all rather wonderfully, it is like that most of the time but there are those moments when it all comes crashing down or those days when it feels like I am going backwards rather than forwards.  It is what we make of those times, those days when anything we do feels like pushing a car uphill, can we move on and put it behind us, or do we carry them around for days feeling them getting heavier and heavier, creating barriers that we can't see over.   

We had a significant day in our family this month, a rather special birthday.  We are now a three adult household, I am a parent to one adult and one child. Nothing changes but everything has.  I spent weeks putting together a memory book for his birthday, collating all the letters that I wrote to him on each of his previous seventeen birthdays some of which I published on here.  I have never been totally comfortable sharing details of my children, the names I have used for the past few years are not their real names, I debated for a long time about whether to share the letter I wrote for this eighteenth and decided on reflection not to, those details are not mine to share anymore.  As well as the letters I loved looking through eighteen years of photos looking for a selection to include in his book.  We bought our first digital camera a few weeks before he was born in November 2004, we decided at the time that as we were likely to take many more photos that we needed to make sure we organised those photos in folders on our computer.  It made looking for them so much easier, we still use cameras for almost all of our photography we only started using smart phones a couple of years ago and they are very much not the latest model with a fancy pants camera on them or a lot of storage.  My digital  SLR is usually my go to camera.

I managed to double book Alice for a weekend in February next year, this seemed utterly ridiculous given that it felt so far in advance, in reality it isn't really.  The end of the year always feels like a big landmark to me and the new year always feels so much further away than it really is, like I need the old year to be finished and done with before I can start thinking about the next one.  I always realise at about this time of year that that simply does not work and I need to get on and buy a diary.  I have tried keeping track of our goings on using electronic diaries but it does not work for me, I love the bigger picture that a paper diary gives me and have simply not found a way to replicate that satisfactorily using any electronic diary.  I keep a list of dates for the following year at the end of each diary but a list of dates is not a good way to keep track of plans, hence my double booking Alice and saying yes to something when she was already busy.  Thankfully it was easily resolved.  I spent a day filling my new diary with birthdays, festivals, lunar cycles, work meetings, and plans we have committed to, there is something rather satisfying about adding to those completely blank pages.  I don't keep a journal but my diaries are a wonderful record of what we have been doing, I often refer back to them and always keep the previous year's diary close to hand on my desk.

I started this year with an intention to walk every day that I could manage it, an intention that slipped a little as the year went on.  I have found myself circling back to that intention in the past weeks, it has quietly slipped back into my day.  It is dark at about 4.30pm here now, properly dark and I love going for a walk in the dark.  It is less stimulating and as a busy introvert that meets my needs, giving me a balance of calm and peace during a full day.  

I don't know when I will be back here again but please know I haven't gone for good I am just taking my time to bring the words and pictures together.  Thank you to all of you who drop by to visit and for all the lovely comments that you leave me, they are much appreciated.  Till next time..............