“There is always a moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.”
– Graham Green

From about the time when our oldest son was about three years old, my husband Bill and I thought he’d be an engineer. The creations he could make out of blocks were amazing. In preschool, his teacher took us aside and advised us to buy this certain type of blocks. She said that the things that our son could build with them were astounding and advanced. The blocks were expensive but we purchased them anyway, supporting our mechanical engineer in the making.

We were astounded again when he became obsessed with Legos, watching him build creations far more advanced than his age. He patiently followed the instructions page by page, rarely asking for help, even more rarely getting frustrated.

We took him to Lego shows. Filled his room with blocks, building sets, and more and more Legos. At his request, we planned birthday parties every summer for five years straight where kids built cool things in our backyard (mostly make believe weapons) from PVC pipes, found objects, and compasses and flashlights from the dollar store.

When he was in sixth grade, our son expressed an interest in playing the drums. He needed lessons in order to play percussion in the school band the following year. I researched drum teachers, narrowed the list down to two, and let him choose which one he wanted to take lessons with. His choice surprised me a little: not the mohawk-haired dude but a woman my age. I contacted her and signed Liam up for his first lesson. The teacher proved to be a good fit and we scheduled a consistent weekly lesson time.

Our son’s teacher said he had natural talent, which isn’t too surprising since both Bill and I played percussion. I joined a drum corps when I was in sixth grade and then played percussion in the marching band in high school. Bill owned a Ludwig drum set and conga drums and played in a band in college. We joke that our son’s rhythm must be a dominant trait, part of his genetic code.

As high school rapidly approaches, we’ve gone to the high school for a few open houses, met the band director, and attended the school's pops concert. Last week, my son and I attended another meeting, where we sat through another presentation, and completed a form for him to request his electives for freshman year in order of preference. Here’s what he chose: 1) concert band, 2) jazz ensemble, 3) symphonic ensemble.

With an eye towards college, I asked my son if he had an interest in the computer science elective. He shook his head, saying, “All I want to do is play music.”

“Are you thinking that might be what you’d want to major in at college?” I asked.

My son paused and looked at me, the glint in his eyes shining, like all of his lights had just turned on: “You can major in music at college?”

I keep thinking about that moment when my son turned to me, remembering the focused look on his face. From one perspective, it was just one ordinary moment in time, a brief conversation, a throwaway memory. But it feels like a significant turning point: his trajectory has changed. What was once his (and our) target for 10 plus years no longer beckons him. “All I want to do is play music, mom.”

Okay. Let’s make that happen.

My husband and I have a motto: what we choose to do individually and as a family needs to either feed one of our souls or feed the family. It’s easy to fill every waking moment with activities, for each of us to run ourselves ragged with obligations, commitments, and responsibilities. Our motto reminds my husband and I – and our boys, too – that we have choices in how we spend our time, what we do with it, and what we make with it.

Right now, there’s a lot on my calendar that doesn’t feed my soul or my family.

I’m feeling stuck in the muck of my own making.

The smart girl part of my brain is used to figuring things out, finding solutions, knowing exactly how to make everything better. I’m trying really hard to think my way out of my funk. It isn’t working.

To clear my head, I take myself out for a walk/jog. Most Saturday and Sunday mornings, I head out at pretty much the same time and follow pretty much the same route so I run into pretty much the same people every weekend. My route takes me through two “hidden” parks in my town. I see the dog folks at the first park, where they meet so their dogs can play off leash. I see seniors doing Tai Chi on the tennis court in the second park.

And then there’s the older lady with the walker.

I first started seeing her several years ago. She’d make her way ever so slowly up and down the long blocks of my street.

She’s fast now. She still has her walker, but she zips along, wearing a bright red jacket and owning the center of the road.

I tell myself that someone, maybe her doctor, told her she had to start exercising. I imagine the first steps she took were hard. Maybe she was afraid of falling. It probably hurt to walk further than she thought she could.

The thing is, she made changes, not by thinking about them, but by doing something.

I remember her when I’m feeling stuck.

I find myself putting so much responsibility on what I choose to do, telling myself how I spend my time has to make sense, make meaningful change, or make money. I think my time is so precious that what I fill it with must be just as valuable. I convince myself I don’t have time, that anything worth doing takes time I just don’t have to spare.

But my day is filled with snippets of time. You probably have them, too. Those little moments when you’re waiting for your coffee to warm up, the washer to finish spinning, the baby to wake from her nap, the computer to wake up so you can start working, again. I find myself filling those moments with default activities, like scrolling through Facebook, Instagram, or Pinterest, moving the wet clothes from the washer to the dryer, putting dishes in the dishwasher, checking email, again.

Are you like me? You tell yourself that “me moments” have to be longer than a few minutes to count. That to work towards your goal, you have to have big chunks of time (and when does that happen?) That to truly relax, you’ll need to schedule at least a 60-minute massage, sometime in the future, maybe, when things aren’t so busy.

And this thinking bogs you down even more: if you’re waiting for big chunks of time to magically appear, you might be waiting for a while. Like when your last child is in first grade, or work slows down, or your husband isn’t so slammed at work, or you’ve found that great, inexpensive sitter.

But within your day, you have many, small “me moments” that can add up to something pretty big.

What would it be like, when you have a minute or more, to not default to chores or your smart phone?

You could ...
• Do yoga poses in the kitchen.
• Doodle in the margins of the recipe on the counter.
• Cut pictures from that magazine you’ll never read for your next vision board.
• Listen to the birds outside your window.
• Daydream.

What exactly you do with these little “me moments” doesn’t matter as much as you think. The point is to do something. To do what makes you happy, sparks your curiosity, or simply sounds like fun. The smallest steps you take will pull your feet out of the sticky, squelchy mud, one after the other, so you can make your way toward more solid ground.

xo
Kathleen

My moms’ gatherings this month will focus on the “me moments”: how to stop thinking, ruminating, scrolling, and procrastinating, and start doing what feeds your soul. We’ll brainstorm a list of Feed Your Soul activities that take only five minutes or less. We’ll decorate a little box to hold your activity cards so that you can refer to them when you’re feeling stuck, giving you a creative reminder that links this self-coaching tool with your day-to-day routines. For more information and to register, visit thewellcraftedmom.com/life-craft-cafe

I was tired yesterday. My sleep has been more broken than usual and I’d had a rough night. But I had a commitment to lead a workshop. I needed to get my supplies organized, pack up the car, find a way to look okay, and go. But staring in the mirror, I realized the whites of my eyes couldn’t be called white because red was clearly the primary color.

I looked at a little dish on my bathroom counter that I made with my moms’ group last month. It’s filled with ten tokens which represent how much energy I have to spend throughout the day. I love my little dish. I wrote the phrase “How will you spend the day?” around the outside and decorated it with yellow flowers and blue polka dots. Each morning I think about my day: planning where I’ll spend my energy and how I can make sure to include energy-building things – like good food, exercise, time with family and friends – so I don’t deplete my energetic account.

Lately, because of my disrupted sleep, I’ve been starting my day with far fewer than ten coins.

Yesterday morning, I dumped all ten tokens onto the counter.

My energetic account was severely overdrawn.

But I got ready for my presentation. I put on a pretty sweater and nice pants and my most comfortable boots. I fixed my hair and put on makeup. I loaded up the car with my flip chart and easel, craft supplies, and paperback copies of my book. I kissed the boys goodbye and got a hug from my husband, wondering the whole time how I was going to do this workshop on three hours sleep.

I was committed. People were counting on me. But I was so tired.

I drove 20 minutes in the rain to the host’s home, took a deep breath before pressing the doorbell, and smiled.

I smiled for the next three and a half hours.

I chatted with the host while we set up. I introduced myself to the women who came early. I led an engaging, interactive workshop about expectations. The women decorated canvas bags with fabric paint and markers, making reminders that they can choose what expectations they carry around with them.

Toward the end of my workshop, I told my story about my empty energetic dish that morning. I also shared a surprising truth: Spending time with them filled my dish.

Since my workshop last month where I made the dish, I've been more aware of where my energy is going. One of the ways that I’ve managed my energy is by unsubscribing to lists. I realized there’s a cost to the daily bombardment of emails from “experts,” all telling me what I should be doing to build my business.

One subscription I haven’t deleted, however, is from Ash from The Middle Finger Project. In her email last week, Ash talked about ditching the traditional elevator pitch, you know, the 30-second self-promotion speech that basically says “I do this thing for this kind of people to help them solve this problem.” It's usually a stilted, full of jargon sentence that only makes everyone uncomfortable.

Ash's recommendation for when asked what you do is start every answer with the statement “My job is so cool.”

During my workshop yesterday, I remembered my job is so cool. I get to create workshops that interesting women come to and then we sit and talk and eat and play. I get to combine one passion (life coaching) with another (crafting). I get to help people learn new things in a way that feels like fun.

And that fills me up.

Hugs,
Kathleen

I have two more awesome workshops for moms scheduled in March – one in San Mateo on Wednesday, March 16th and another online on Thursday, March 17th. For more info and to register, visit thewellcraftedmom.com/life-craft-cafe.

Why am I doing this?

I’m standing at my kitchen counter, eight plastic bags lined up in a row in front of me, half full of various ingredients, like chopped carrots (eight pounds of them), tomatoes, zucchini, and more, with printed recipes leaned up against the backsplash. I’ve been chopping vegetables and pouring ingredients into bags for more than an hour and my feet hurt, my hands are feeling a bit achy, and there’s a lot more to do before I’m done.

My goal was to prepare and freeze eight meals at the same time, following instructions (that guarantee my life will be changed) from New Leaf Wellness. Then, I’d have a supply of meals stacked up in my freezer that I could defrost when needed and cook in the slow cooker the next day.  

It's a good plan. But now, standing in front of the big mess I’ve created, realizing I've misjudged how much time it was going to take and it's now past dinnertime, I’ve forgotten the reasons why I thought making eight meals at once was a good idea in the first place.

I’m in the beginning stages of a 14-week long program to write and publish my second book, this one about baby sign language and parenting, a collaborative project with my husband, Bill. Fourteen weeks doesn’t sound like a long time – and it really isn’t – but I keep telling myself that I accomplished it last year when I wrote The Well-Crafted Mom. Well, that’s not exactly true. I extended the program last year by adding three extra weeks to the writing process. This time around, I won’t have that option.

The answer to why am I doing this is clear – to take better care of future me.

So, on Saturday, with the half-finished project in front of me, I focused my attention and my love for my future busy self and got back to work. I called in my husband and the boys and put them to work to craft last night’s leftovers into dinner (my 13-year-old made a plate of delicious fish tacos for me.) I made room in the freezer for seven meals, all loaded up in plastic freezer bags, and left one bag in the fridge to put in the slow cooker for dinner the next night.

I’m hoping this new system will allow me to continue to feed my family well – even while I’m super busy. I hope that I’ll be able to free up the time and attention that I normally give to food planning and preparation so I can focus more on the book – and still sit down for a stress-free family dinner, well-prepared in the past by me for future me.

Now that's life-changing.


In my March groups, moms will be taking a look at the hard responsibilities, the obligations that feel obligatory, the tasks that can’t be ditched or delegated. We’ll all dig deep to decide why these pieces earn a place on our schedules. Why we choose to commit our precious time to doing what doesn’t always bring us immediate joy. Knowing your why can give you purpose, ignite your own passion, and keep you motivated when you need a reason that’s bigger than the task at hand. For more information and to register, visit thewellcraftedmom.com/life-craft-cafe