I have been where Prairie Mom is. I thought it was my personality, not being able to dawdle. Type A right? The song that came to mind is a Veggie Tales one(https://bigidea.fandom.com/wiki/Busy,_Busy). "I'm busy, busy, dreadfully busy
You've no idea what I have to do.
Busy, busy, shockingly busy
Much, much too busy for you." I grew up with a hard working mom, she still is, but ultimately it comes across as "much much too busy for you" sometimes. Even as a 43 year old...(young?) woman that stings a bit. I can see how my mom steps into the habit, as do I, of doing all there is to do. A habit is easy. I try with my 8 children to stop and linger. It takes effort and I frequently miss moments. I have to remember my "to do's" are not eternal, but my husband and children are. Let me consciously choose them over what I "have to" do, is my supplication.
Veggie Tales! I immediately had to go to YouTube to listen to a few favourites. Our girls had them all memorized and to this day will regale us with "Barbara Manatee" should we request it. :)
With eight children you are busy! It's inspirational for you to be able to see how that sting from your mom can be changed into something a little softer that you can offer your kids. I really respect that, Nikki.
I feel like most of us can be "SO BUSY"! Sometimes I have to very, very consciously choose not to say that. I am not under some boss named Busy! I get to choose how to frame my life and I like who I am better when I let that other stuff slide and build calm and peace into my days whenever and wherever I can. :)
"I get to choose how to frame my life" That is significant. Sometimes we go along with the flow of life, forgetting we have a choice. I don't get a gold star at the end of my life for getting it all done. So I'll play Uno, read the Trumpeter Swan or play "store" with my five year old with more minutes of my day than I want to. Being fully present, not rushing or thinking about what I have to do(I never could have done this in the past). Which in turn has made me want to spend my minutes there and opens my eyes to other important moments with all my quickly growing children.
Tara your examples in the kitchen with slow food and mostly meat has given more time for such important things. A chunk of beef/pork or a couple chickens roasting in the oven for a few hours takes little effort and is nourishing. There is a growing list of changes in my life and home spurred by you. Much gratitude.
I don’t even think I could dawdle if I tried. I have recently come to realize how BUSY and hectic my life is. My mind is always whirling with the next task and my body is worn down with the stresses of this BUSY life I have chosen. I am not doing it well. I admit that. I need to learn how to let go of things that don’t matter, balance the things that are left, take time with my children, stop DOING and start dawdling. Thanks for writing this. It confirms for me some things that I have been pondering over the last couple months.
I've been there. I totally get it. These are the things that I come to only by having lived them and, like you, observed that what I was doing was wearing me down. It is freeing to know that we can choose to do things differently, to hold our precious time sacred, even in bits and spurts.
I used to live that go-go-go life. I loved it. I was productive and busy and capable and Did All The Things!
It’s better over here. You can do it. Say no to something. Just one thing. And hold that space. Then say no to something else. Soon, you’ll have enough space to say yes to the gloriousness of sitting for a moment to watch the sky.
Great advice, Alli. It is addictive to live in that tempo. I think it's modelled to us and in many ways makes us feel important. A sort of outward glossing. It's a weird time when it takes courage to let ourselves just be sometimes.
All my most precious realizations and discoveries have come from when i get out of my own way and just straight dawdle.
I owe much of who i am now to it, and who i will be in the days to come. I too dabble in wild medicines, but not with any pursued prowess. I like to be surprised by a mushroom. The few times I've gone out to seek a certain mushroom or plant, using context clues and book learning, i have found myself to be stressed by the venture. It becomes like a job. But when i dawdle...that's when the magic happens! What i am meant to discover finds me, and whether it is animal, vegetable, mineral, miracle, I stand in awe and deep connection with it. True learning comes from letting go and wondering, wandering, growing silent as your steps veer off the path. I have never forgotten one thing I've learned in that way. It stays with you as a profoundy intimate memory.
There is no need to ever use the words "I'm bored". The world around us is amazing.
I was walking from work yesterday, listening to an audiobook to get that task out of the way, passing through a town I see so little of towards the next thing due in 20 minutes. Autumn leaves floating around, the sun shining beautifully on a late autumn day and I could feel nothing apart from the stress of a week full of this and that, family arriving from abroad, cleaning, cooking and repeat, my thoughts ran ahead to when all the hustle and bustle will be over. And then I saw him. A man in his late 50s sprawled on the sidewalk in a bus stop. Body shaking, a group of onlookers attending while waiting for an ambulance. He couldn't speak and the look in his eyes was full of the fear of an untimely death. A few people started talking and laughing above his head, a woman rubbed his back mindlessly listening to the conversation. From behind a guy with a giant backpack pushed through completely ignoring the man on the ground. The look of desperation in his eyes threw me off the path I was on. Did he have a task in mind as well when his body hit the pavement ? Was he leaving work? Was he going somewhere? What were his thoughts that morning? What are his regrets? Rain is falling outside and I feel an acute need to leave my tasks and just be out there allowing it to swallow me whole. Thank you for another brilliant piece.
Oh, Diana, what an evocative, transporting story shared with such honesty. Thank you for telling us about this. I have so many questions, so many feelings. Why would someone just rush through while a man is on the ground?! What is happening to us?! My word. Yes, what was he thinking moments earlier. Just like that...
When I walk our land with my critters, we meander. We wander over this hill, follow a stream bed, over another hill, all to see the tree or rocks or plants that catch my eye. Of course they follow their noses but I just wander. No intention, no exercise, just time with the land. Lovely.
I love this Tara. When my son was small, I particularly noticed it of some of the other mothers of small children. I remember one in particular who, as she described it was always so busy she was “spinning” and wore it as a badge of honor. It was always a good example to me of what not to do and a reminder to slow down enjoy my life and my family.
I think I've picked up more of how I want to live by making choices of how I didn't want to live and then trying to figure out what the opposite looked like. "Spinning", yes, I've heard that one, too. I know some people that carry that frenetic way of being and, to be honest, I find it very draining. I feel like they're a bit like a whirlwind that pulls energy into their vortex and it takes conscious and determined effort to remain separate from it.
Well said, and your whirlwind analogy is right on. It does take effort to not get sucked in, but the more I learned to deal with people like that over the years the easier it became. I’m in my 50s now and it’s a piece of cake!
Same and same and same! I am thinking that my fifties is the easiest decade yet. It's a great combination of an ease that slides in from experience and a wonderful assuredness where other people's things are not a worry like they were in my younger years.
This is an interesting post and one that I read from afar...standing on top of my to-do list, only sort of comprehending this word you speak of....dawdle.
But I’ll think about it now that we are drying off our sweet cow for the winter.
One can dawdle, even in increments, dear Esther. To do lists are meant to keep place so your mind can let that go for a time. Time for a little nothingness. :)
This resonates with me. I've always felt physically tired when people used to tell me how busy they were... your words help me reason why. I'm so glad I felt that way because it stopped me from falling into that trap. I wish people could see the benefits of dawdling! 😁
Yes! I wrote in a comment above about how I find there's a vortex around that kind of energy that feels like it's sapping me. I just want to say, "shhhhhhhh, slooooow down...".
Do you think there’s a way to collectively dawdle?
I enjoy a good dawdle. I do not yet think myself capable of dawdling in company. Suddenly, they are showing me something they’ve found and I have that purpose of witnessing their witnessing. Or, I want to stay with this stone for ages, but sense they are getting cold.
This may be mostly due to my collective dawdling attempts being with humans under the age of ten who call me Mama - ha! But it does, upon reflection, seem it would require a very specific pairing of people to achieve a mutual dawdle.
Oh my word, I love this insight Alli. Of course! I think maybe the beauty of the dawdle is in the fact that it's a lone affair. Maybe therein lies the magic. Just us doing everything at our own pace for awhile. I was trying to imagine dawdling with even my closest loves and it's just not the same.
Right? My mind can’t tune out (or tune in?) quite the same, even with my very favorite person along for the dawdle. And with him, all other things are possible.
I am very good at dawdling, and procrastinating, and biding time while I ponder. Sometimes it is to my detriment.
I find that the older recipes depend on your having a basic knowledge, or reading other parts in the book. My recipe books from the 80s have additional information in the front, back, and beginning of each section in the book. It requires that you slow down (wink wink) and read through everything before starting a project. Especially when they hide extra ingredients in the middle of the recipe text that are not on the ingredient list.
Currently, I am researching how to harvest and store Indigo (Persicaria tinctoria) seeds. Much of the knowledge is phrased in that older writing style, especially since the books were published a decade or decades ago.
p.s. A very kind subscriber donated some money into the gift subscription pot. Your subscription has been covered for the next six months, no charge, because of her generosity. :)
Thank you for your lovely comment, Madison. I am so glad to "meet" you. I don't know a single soul I agree with fully, not even my man and he's as good as it gets. :)
I have been where Prairie Mom is. I thought it was my personality, not being able to dawdle. Type A right? The song that came to mind is a Veggie Tales one(https://bigidea.fandom.com/wiki/Busy,_Busy). "I'm busy, busy, dreadfully busy
You've no idea what I have to do.
Busy, busy, shockingly busy
Much, much too busy for you." I grew up with a hard working mom, she still is, but ultimately it comes across as "much much too busy for you" sometimes. Even as a 43 year old...(young?) woman that stings a bit. I can see how my mom steps into the habit, as do I, of doing all there is to do. A habit is easy. I try with my 8 children to stop and linger. It takes effort and I frequently miss moments. I have to remember my "to do's" are not eternal, but my husband and children are. Let me consciously choose them over what I "have to" do, is my supplication.
Veggie Tales! I immediately had to go to YouTube to listen to a few favourites. Our girls had them all memorized and to this day will regale us with "Barbara Manatee" should we request it. :)
With eight children you are busy! It's inspirational for you to be able to see how that sting from your mom can be changed into something a little softer that you can offer your kids. I really respect that, Nikki.
I feel like most of us can be "SO BUSY"! Sometimes I have to very, very consciously choose not to say that. I am not under some boss named Busy! I get to choose how to frame my life and I like who I am better when I let that other stuff slide and build calm and peace into my days whenever and wherever I can. :)
"I get to choose how to frame my life" That is significant. Sometimes we go along with the flow of life, forgetting we have a choice. I don't get a gold star at the end of my life for getting it all done. So I'll play Uno, read the Trumpeter Swan or play "store" with my five year old with more minutes of my day than I want to. Being fully present, not rushing or thinking about what I have to do(I never could have done this in the past). Which in turn has made me want to spend my minutes there and opens my eyes to other important moments with all my quickly growing children.
Tara your examples in the kitchen with slow food and mostly meat has given more time for such important things. A chunk of beef/pork or a couple chickens roasting in the oven for a few hours takes little effort and is nourishing. There is a growing list of changes in my life and home spurred by you. Much gratitude.
I don’t even think I could dawdle if I tried. I have recently come to realize how BUSY and hectic my life is. My mind is always whirling with the next task and my body is worn down with the stresses of this BUSY life I have chosen. I am not doing it well. I admit that. I need to learn how to let go of things that don’t matter, balance the things that are left, take time with my children, stop DOING and start dawdling. Thanks for writing this. It confirms for me some things that I have been pondering over the last couple months.
I've been there. I totally get it. These are the things that I come to only by having lived them and, like you, observed that what I was doing was wearing me down. It is freeing to know that we can choose to do things differently, to hold our precious time sacred, even in bits and spurts.
I used to live that go-go-go life. I loved it. I was productive and busy and capable and Did All The Things!
It’s better over here. You can do it. Say no to something. Just one thing. And hold that space. Then say no to something else. Soon, you’ll have enough space to say yes to the gloriousness of sitting for a moment to watch the sky.
Great advice, Alli. It is addictive to live in that tempo. I think it's modelled to us and in many ways makes us feel important. A sort of outward glossing. It's a weird time when it takes courage to let ourselves just be sometimes.
Sing it sister.
All my most precious realizations and discoveries have come from when i get out of my own way and just straight dawdle.
I owe much of who i am now to it, and who i will be in the days to come. I too dabble in wild medicines, but not with any pursued prowess. I like to be surprised by a mushroom. The few times I've gone out to seek a certain mushroom or plant, using context clues and book learning, i have found myself to be stressed by the venture. It becomes like a job. But when i dawdle...that's when the magic happens! What i am meant to discover finds me, and whether it is animal, vegetable, mineral, miracle, I stand in awe and deep connection with it. True learning comes from letting go and wondering, wandering, growing silent as your steps veer off the path. I have never forgotten one thing I've learned in that way. It stays with you as a profoundy intimate memory.
There is no need to ever use the words "I'm bored". The world around us is amazing.
Beautifully said, Grace! Yes, so true, that knowledge imbued and embedded when we are, too. Glorious!
I was walking from work yesterday, listening to an audiobook to get that task out of the way, passing through a town I see so little of towards the next thing due in 20 minutes. Autumn leaves floating around, the sun shining beautifully on a late autumn day and I could feel nothing apart from the stress of a week full of this and that, family arriving from abroad, cleaning, cooking and repeat, my thoughts ran ahead to when all the hustle and bustle will be over. And then I saw him. A man in his late 50s sprawled on the sidewalk in a bus stop. Body shaking, a group of onlookers attending while waiting for an ambulance. He couldn't speak and the look in his eyes was full of the fear of an untimely death. A few people started talking and laughing above his head, a woman rubbed his back mindlessly listening to the conversation. From behind a guy with a giant backpack pushed through completely ignoring the man on the ground. The look of desperation in his eyes threw me off the path I was on. Did he have a task in mind as well when his body hit the pavement ? Was he leaving work? Was he going somewhere? What were his thoughts that morning? What are his regrets? Rain is falling outside and I feel an acute need to leave my tasks and just be out there allowing it to swallow me whole. Thank you for another brilliant piece.
Oh, Diana, what an evocative, transporting story shared with such honesty. Thank you for telling us about this. I have so many questions, so many feelings. Why would someone just rush through while a man is on the ground?! What is happening to us?! My word. Yes, what was he thinking moments earlier. Just like that...
Did you go out in the rain?
I did. Rain is the best. I think we've normalised detachment from everything that doesn't concern us.
When I walk our land with my critters, we meander. We wander over this hill, follow a stream bed, over another hill, all to see the tree or rocks or plants that catch my eye. Of course they follow their noses but I just wander. No intention, no exercise, just time with the land. Lovely.
It is lovely and it's the very stuff of life.
I love this Tara. When my son was small, I particularly noticed it of some of the other mothers of small children. I remember one in particular who, as she described it was always so busy she was “spinning” and wore it as a badge of honor. It was always a good example to me of what not to do and a reminder to slow down enjoy my life and my family.
I think I've picked up more of how I want to live by making choices of how I didn't want to live and then trying to figure out what the opposite looked like. "Spinning", yes, I've heard that one, too. I know some people that carry that frenetic way of being and, to be honest, I find it very draining. I feel like they're a bit like a whirlwind that pulls energy into their vortex and it takes conscious and determined effort to remain separate from it.
Well said, and your whirlwind analogy is right on. It does take effort to not get sucked in, but the more I learned to deal with people like that over the years the easier it became. I’m in my 50s now and it’s a piece of cake!
Same and same and same! I am thinking that my fifties is the easiest decade yet. It's a great combination of an ease that slides in from experience and a wonderful assuredness where other people's things are not a worry like they were in my younger years.
This is an interesting post and one that I read from afar...standing on top of my to-do list, only sort of comprehending this word you speak of....dawdle.
But I’ll think about it now that we are drying off our sweet cow for the winter.
One can dawdle, even in increments, dear Esther. To do lists are meant to keep place so your mind can let that go for a time. Time for a little nothingness. :)
I am definitely a dawdler, too! +Thanks for the idea of the “sit spot.” We find those instinctively, but it seems all the more potent with a name.
Yes, the name makes it official. :)
Love reading your articles/stories…I have always loved to dawdle…especially as a kid. This is a great reminder that we all need to dawdle!
Official Dawdler's Club. Want in?
Thank you for this gentle and beautiful reminder to shift. Shift towards love and creation and behold the magic. Lovely, Tara.
Thank you, Megan.
This resonates with me. I've always felt physically tired when people used to tell me how busy they were... your words help me reason why. I'm so glad I felt that way because it stopped me from falling into that trap. I wish people could see the benefits of dawdling! 😁
Yes! I wrote in a comment above about how I find there's a vortex around that kind of energy that feels like it's sapping me. I just want to say, "shhhhhhhh, slooooow down...".
Do you think there’s a way to collectively dawdle?
I enjoy a good dawdle. I do not yet think myself capable of dawdling in company. Suddenly, they are showing me something they’ve found and I have that purpose of witnessing their witnessing. Or, I want to stay with this stone for ages, but sense they are getting cold.
This may be mostly due to my collective dawdling attempts being with humans under the age of ten who call me Mama - ha! But it does, upon reflection, seem it would require a very specific pairing of people to achieve a mutual dawdle.
Oh my word, I love this insight Alli. Of course! I think maybe the beauty of the dawdle is in the fact that it's a lone affair. Maybe therein lies the magic. Just us doing everything at our own pace for awhile. I was trying to imagine dawdling with even my closest loves and it's just not the same.
Right? My mind can’t tune out (or tune in?) quite the same, even with my very favorite person along for the dawdle. And with him, all other things are possible.
I am very good at dawdling, and procrastinating, and biding time while I ponder. Sometimes it is to my detriment.
I find that the older recipes depend on your having a basic knowledge, or reading other parts in the book. My recipe books from the 80s have additional information in the front, back, and beginning of each section in the book. It requires that you slow down (wink wink) and read through everything before starting a project. Especially when they hide extra ingredients in the middle of the recipe text that are not on the ingredient list.
Currently, I am researching how to harvest and store Indigo (Persicaria tinctoria) seeds. Much of the knowledge is phrased in that older writing style, especially since the books were published a decade or decades ago.
p.s. A very kind subscriber donated some money into the gift subscription pot. Your subscription has been covered for the next six months, no charge, because of her generosity. :)
So sweet of you Tara!
Thank you for your lovely comment, Madison. I am so glad to "meet" you. I don't know a single soul I agree with fully, not even my man and he's as good as it gets. :)