As I am lying in bed tonight in a state of complete caffeine-induced awakeness, my brain is racing with all the projects planned for the summer because, I realize, that as of last Friday - school is out for the summer! Before my husband nods off, I say "Don't you EVER get me 12 ounces of Gate coffee at 3:00 PM again! Please." I was a maniac all afternoon - a tasmanian devil dispensing order and cleanliness to the horror of my kids. How long will I lie here awake? I am wishing I had the melatonin my mother sent me in the mail, but has not yet arrived. Let's see . . . There is the master bath renovation, painting the kids bedrooms, a small face lift in the kitchen with molding and hardware for the cabinets and the perpetual toil in the butterfly garden that gives me color and joy each day as I look out the dining room windows. I have a small vacation to plan in July and a party to plan in September and viola, then my summer will be done and I will have to attend to the kids and school and my life will be crowded with annoying and cluttersome life things to do. My thoughts hone in on organization and planning when suddenly it hits me that I have planned no time for me - THE MOM. What did I hope to do with this time and space that during the school year I had not made time and space for? And I thought of all the things that had gone unwritten over the last few months and whether it might be possible to let all the responsibilities go on any given day and just do what I wanted to do? Then Terry Gross' interview with Neil Young pops into my head and I can hear him saying that the single most important key to his success was his COMPLETE dedication to his muse. He would live his life around his muse, and stop whatever he was doing in life to attend to that muse, listen to it, ACT upon it. Not the other way around, the way I have always done it, by prioritizing all the necessary, required tasks first so I could get to the "fun" stuff, which strangely so seldom happens. Neil's revelation had a frightening impact on me - why hadn't someone told me this twenty years ago? Let's face it, the guy can't sing to save his life and he's considered a musical genius! How did I not ever learn this way of life was even possible? Maybe it was the puritan work ethic my mother hammered into my head all those years when I seemed to be not listening?
This summer my intention is to commit to my muse and to live by it and be damned what happens to life and bills and unmade phone calls and unfinished busy work.
