I am so grateful for this time to slow down and wander, to be with my mom and for her very willingly giving me a place to stay so I can take this time off. I realize I am giving up some potential financial security in the future by taking this break, but I gave financial security up tenfold when I decided to have kids and work less and put a lot of my time, energy and money into raising them. So why do I feel guilty about taking this time off and potentially having a harder time supporting myself later? I almost wrote taking care of myself later, but I realize that in doing this I am taking care of myself NOW so that later I will be better equipped to support myself. And perhaps find a different way of doing it that isn’t so resource intensive, time intensive and feels like it takes too much away from who I am. So much of what I have done for work is just about constantly doing, doing, doing usually for others. Ticking off checkboxes, head down, not seeing the bigger picture, not seeing past the next list of things to do. My life does not need to be this way, no one‘s life needs to be this way.
Taking time today to go for a walk I did have a specific goal of getting to a Little Free Library that was a half hour walk away. I got there and discovered it was even more amazing than I expected. Not only was there a cute little library, there were extra books on each side, one was a children’s side it had a little kids bench, the other was the adult side and there was a bigger persons bench and in between was a bowl for dog water and a measuring stick (not really sure what that was for!) I had a look at all the books, pulled out a couple that interested me and since I didn’t need to get anywhere else, the sun was out and I was a little tired because it was quite an uphill walk, I sat down on the grown up bench and started flipping through a short, colorful book on fear and creativity. It was incredible just sitting there focusing on this beautiful book with nothing else I needed to do and realizing how much fear stops me from doing things. People strolled by with their dogs and one person stopped and said ‘oh that’s a great book!’ It turns out that it was the owner of the free little library so I got to tell her how much I enjoyed the space and how impressed I was. She told me a little bit about the author who happen to be a friend of hers from New York and showed me a couple of other books that she’s written for kids. It was so fantastic to be able to actually talk to someone who had created this lovely space and let them know how much I enjoyed it.
I decided to start leaving a little something in each free little library I stop at. For the last several years I have been printing nature photos that I’ve taken and writing quotes on the back of them, I now have well over 100 of these and while I am using some of them on my blog in my daily photo, I am ready to set them free and let others enjoy them. It feels good to be able to give back in my small way and maybe that will make a difference for somebody.