Am I Nurturing Myself?

Or am I finding more ways to aggravate the stress? I don’t really have a solid plan anymore. It’s just kind of this vague, fuzzy glob of thoughts. My oldest two kids have moved out. One of them almost a thousand miles away, the other less than fifteen minutes away. I still have my twelve-year-old at home, but let’s face it, she’s pretty much self-service these days. I don’t exist unless she needs for something like providing some type of food that she can’t (read too lazy to) fix herself, to drive her places she can’t (or is too lazy to) walk to, or buy things she can’t afford –which is pretty much everything since she is unemployed. I’m a stay-at-home mom. In the old days, I was busy with getting kids to school, making sure they had their lunch money, homework done, do laundry, grocery shopping and any housework that wasn’t already covered by their chores. Now that allergies and aggravated back and knee issues have greatly reduced the amount of housework I do, in many ways, the vast majority of my day seems to be spent “nurturing” myself.

I read, novels, non-fiction, articles on the internet that I found when doing a search for something else. I write. Lately, the only writing I’ve been doing is right here. I haven’t posted anything on my own blog, and I’ve been neglecting my fiction writing. I’m supposed to be doing Camp NaNoWriMo this month, which is a scaled down version of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), but so far, every day, something has come up to eat into my writing time, from the cat losing a battle with a razor left in the bathtub, to spending over two hours at the pharmacy because of computer mix ups, combined with a new computer system that is apparently complicated to learn. I knit and crochet. That is fantastic for nurturing my soul. If only I could read or write and knit or crochet at the same time! I like to multi-task whenever possible. I feel less guilty. I tend to feel guiltier when reading or watching TV or a movie than I do when writing or doing needle work. I guess in the latter cases, I feel like I’m at least “producing” something, even if it’s only for one person. The phrase, “A productive member of society” comes to mind. I feel guilty not being as productive around the house as I think I should be, so I rationalize that if I am at least involved in productive activities, then I’m not a complete parasite. So I guess in my case, any activity that lessens the constant cloud of guilt hanging over my head is nurturing.