WWTD?

Checking the mail has become a bigger deal lately. It's an exciting little trip.

I checked the mail today, feeling rather old and sad for myself and my excitement, and got a flyer advertising a book study to help "put faith back into your busy life and arrange your life for spiritual transformation."

But I'm not busy. That was what hit me on the long walk back from the mail. I have nothing going on this evening, no one expecting dinner, no tense board meeting to attend. No game night. No essays to grade. I'm not wrung out from wrangling the joy of writing into 130 hormonal, hot, sticky 7th graders.

It's heaven. It's also really heavy, as in, the non-busyness of my life tends to make my pretty crazy sometimes.

I planned for this time, financially. I'm getting a ton of writing done. I'm loving the slow pace of things and the freedom. But what I didn't plan for was the emotional tension, the way I'd miss the rush. Our society encourages and celebrates (and subversively idolizes) the rush. Magazine articles, advertisements, everyday conversations, blogposts, facebook statuses, small talk...references to glorified craziness are everywhere. Laments, moans, admonitions of busyness all thinly disguise Puritanical pride at our over-doing. And they all make me feel guilty in my rest.

Who better than Thoreau to channel in defense of my new lifestyle? I feel much better. :o)

"When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality."

"He enjoys true leisure who has time to improve his soul's estate."

"Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate."