Abundantly Busy

It has been a busy week. I'm now officially an adjunct professor, and I spent a substantial portion of my time last week immersed in reading and planning. After 27 years as an educator with a distinctly different focus, I'm getting a glimpse into the world my friends who teach content areas have told me about for years. I've thought of them often, fondly and with
                    admiration as I tackled the tasks this new adventure has set before me.

With this new venture, my schedule has shifted once again. It took me the better part of a year after retirement to get into a routine that made sense and now that routine has been upended again. Like a dresser drawer of mismatched socks, my interests and responsibilities lay before me, nudging me to restore them to some sort of order.

I'm not complaining. I'm both busier and happier than I've been in a very long time. I think nothing of work weeks that expand into evenings and weekends because everything I am doing is something I love and the excitement of new challenges is propelling me forward.

Did I mention that I'm still in the process of editing a novel? Raising a child? Keeping the house in an order that, most days, barely escapes comparison to the upended drawer of socks?

I'm trying to be patient as I sort those socks, knowing this is once again an opportunity to evaluate my priorities. I know that they're out of order right now. The nights and weekends that belonged completely to my family have been usurped -- temporarily, I hope -- as I try to sort things out and put them in their proper place. My brain whirs constantly, reminding me of a time nearly thirty years ago when I was just starting out as a school counselor. So much to do, so many possibilities, such an embarrassment of riches.

And so I shall sort my socks, all the while trying to remind myself that sorting also requires culling and so some socks will not make the cut. As I do this, I will try very hard to remember the lessons learned in the past year -- lessons about who and what is important, what I can and cannot control and that doing a job right and coming up with a workable schedule takes time. It's also likely to be fraught with frustration and subject to interruption.

And no matter how crazy each day seems, I will try to take a few minutes to pause and be grateful, because -- in my case, anyway -- a busy life is an abundant life. Whatever else it is, it's never dull.