Last week my family and I escaped to the mountains for our fall break and this trip came at the perfect time to rest and reflect. Professionally, I’m now 10 months in to the launch of a start up tech company with a group of business partners. Most days I feel like I’m in over my head, and on the other days I’m just barely keeping my head above water. In parenting, I feel like there’s new frontiers around every corner with our oldest two testing the boundaries of the teenage years. There’s a picture of my wife and I that I keep inside my planner, young college kids in love unburdened by any real cares. Life was full then, but in a different kind of way. All we cared about then were our hopes and dreams. Now, it feels like life is full of other things as well, responsibilities, expectations, hurry. It leaves less time to pause and appreciate the magic that is life.
These past few months have been probably the busiest time for me in years. By the time we arrived in the mountains I was burnt out and so was our family. Our pace of life has picked up as the girls have taken on school sports and my wife started back seeing patients. It just hasn’t felt like there’s been much breathing room. Case in point, last night I got back from a school board meeting at 9pm and still had work to complete. Piled up in the kitchen were dishes, our youngest refused to go to sleep, and my wife was still working on patient charts. I’m not complaining, this is the life we’ve chosen right now. But it is so full, and yesterday evening before I finally crashed into bed I found myself asking… how did we get here and is this sustainable?
Our time away in the mountains did help. It allowed us all to slow down and pause. I read and journaled. Samantha and I had long deep conversations (the kind you have when you’ve got nothing but time). Our family finished a book that we’d been trying to complete for nearly a year (Wonder). We also finished watching the series Blackish, which was bittersweet, and now it’s time to find our next family show. We danced around a campfire and hiked up a mountain. We took time to experience the little things that makes life magical. I left feeling as if we had just enough momentum left for the journey.
Maybe that’s what will sustain us until the next break. Right now I don’t see (at least based on our calendar and current commitments) any let up in our pace. Perhaps this is just the pace for right now, as we make our way to towards the next leg of the journey. This is the fall, traditionally harvest season, so my hope is that we are preparing to enjoy the fruits of our labor. In many ways, I can already see the finish line, even if I don’t know how or when we’ll reach it.
SDW3
everyday fatherhood 