Dipping my toes back in

Our seven year old was crying last night. I knew that was coming, I hadn’t expected it until today though. After six weeks of summer break, he’s now dreading his swimming lessons.

I feel the same.

I gave myself the summer off and now I’m intimidated by the bright white surface in front of me. I can remind myself I’ve been here before, it doesn’t help one bit. 

Nevertheless, I’m glad I took the summer off. I’ve found there’s a huge difference between not working by choice (figure A) and not working because you’re not getting around to it (figure B).

It only took me fifteen and a half years of motherhood to figure out kids are much more fun when you accept their presence means that half an hour of no interruptions is too much to ask. There will be something every seven to eight minutes: nose bleed, hungry for a snack, pressing question about polar bears, plant fell over, ate too many snacks, “he bit me”, “but she pulled my hair”, someone accidentally locked himself out, someone purposefully locked someone else out…  by the time you’ve finished your thirty minute task, you’ll be too grumpy and tired to go out and have fun.

This year I decided to skip all that nonsense and not work at all. We went on three short trips, all within a two hour drive (can you tell I’m nailing this parenting thing?), went shopping for school stuff, played lots of board games and, would you believe this: I even read more than one book. (One and a half, to be precise.)

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Talking about succes… I sat just down and wrote something, then made a few drawings! That wasn’t too bad. To keep myself comfortable in these waters I will turn on subscriptions again. If you are a paid subscriber, you receive a couple of comics / sketchbook pages / whatever I’m up to per week.

Not a paid subscriber yet? You can now try it for free!

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With love,