Shhhhhhhhhhh

One of the things in this week's chapter of The Mentor's Guide by Lois Zachary was the importance of *silence*. She talked about establishing the relationship between mentor and mentee and how we do not need to be afraid of pauses in conversation. I started thinking more about silence and how rare it is for me to have silence in my life. After class Monday night I halted the impulse to make phone calls while I walked home. Instead of catching up with friends or making evening plans with my bf or taking care of some business - all things I usually do while walking home from campus - I left the phone alone.

It was very different for me. My life is full of busy-ness. I'm always on the go, doing projects, taking kids places, working on papers, studying, reading, go go go. I'm still trying to make a lunch date with a good friend in celebration of our birthdays. Our birthdays were in December.

Sometimes I feel like my priorities are screwed up: I spend so much time on school, so little time playing with my kids or with friends. Or by the time I do get together with friends I'm so tired that I end up just falling asleep. And then I think again about how important it is to do well in school now and that the investment will ultimately benefit the kids, not to mention the difficulty of juggling school/kids/jobs...... reality's tough.

So walking home in the quiet stillness of a Windsor evening - hah - semi's splashing by me on Wyandotte, students going in both directions, kids playing outside in the snow: Windsor is hardly what you can call quiet. The quiet was in my head. I breathed (though not too deeply, this *is* Windsor remember), I thought about the class, I thought about my other classes, I thought about a project for another class and came up with a decent working outline....my mind just wandered. It was Wild-Bizzare-Wonderful.

I've taken to walking home in the quiet ever since then. It's hard to resist getting 'stuff' done, but I've decided to see if there's more to life than maximizing every minute's potential. It's starting to grow on me. I'm getting so much thinking done. ;) (~ forever Type A, can you tell?)