Learning How to Take a Break and Creating a Break Time Menu
Hey, you! I’m back from my unintentional but absolutely necessary summer break. As always, I’m setting a timer for 20 minutes, and then I’m sending this unpolished beauty out into the void where it will hopefully bless someone reading it.
Whew, I don’t know where this summer has gone. I’m in denial that we’re just a few weeks out from starting school. The Little Way Homeschool kicks off August 5th, so I’ve been in the stage of summer where my brain is melting from 11th hour homeschool planning, and we’re trying to squeeze in all of our summer bucket items. I’m pleased to report that we’ve gotten to our biggest priority items. Top of the list items included: planting/expanding/maintaining the flower and vegetable garden, a mother/daughter weekend trip to Kansas City with Jane to celebrate 8th grade graduation, creating my Rule of Life using Tsh Oxenreider’s course (highly recommend, not an ad!), a family trip to Minnesota for a week on the lake, reading several books for fun, and making several batches of homemade ice cream. All in all, it’s been a wonderful summer!
As much as I love summer, though, it’s a special flavor of hard as a full-time mom at home. The lack of head space finally got the best of me. I met with my spiritual director a few weeks back for a tune up, and during the portion of confession where he gives me counsel, he pointedly asked me, “Why do you think you’re struggling more this month than before?” Cue the tears! I. Didn’t. Have. Head. Space. I. needed. A. Break. The drive to spiritual direction and sitting still for confession was my first break in awhile. It was time to rework things to give me regular breaks that I can count on. Hearing my spiritual director frame this as a spiritual issue helped me to see how the lack of breaks was affecting every area of my life. A few weeks since that meeting, I’m starting to feel like myself again. I’m learning how to make time for mini daily sabbaths, too. Turns out I’m not a machine and can’t go, go, go. Darn.
In this season of unpredictable week-to-week schedules, Philip and I are meeting weekly to discuss that week’s schedule and find a few hours for me to have a break out of the house. Once the school year begins, we hope a specific pocket of time will become my regular, dependable break time. For now, the weekly scheduled breaks are a saving grace for my sanity. Years ago, I used to have a sitter come to the house weekly for a few hours so that I could have a break out of the house. Then COVID happened. Then life moved along at its furious clip, we fell into the habit of me not having a regular break when we moved and had a newborn. Our oldest is now 14, so Philip and I started having a weekly date at the coffee shop to get some work done, but that is decidedly a dedicated work time and not a break. I still needed a break. So, we put it on the calendar.
The trouble was, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do on my break. My first thoughts included all of the productive things I could do—purge a cluttered play space, fold mountains of laundry, finish prepping for the homeschool year…. I know, I know! I forgot that this time was supposed to be a break. I didn’t know what I wanted to do that actually felt like a break and was something I was excited about. So, I asked Philip to give me an hour before dinner one random weeknight a few weeks back, and I headed back to our bedroom. I spent that time creating my Break Time Menu on my phone notes app. The Break Time Menu is a list of all of the things that sound like my version of a life-giving break (and not productive work). I’ll share a few of my ideas as inspiration for your Break Time Menu:
Walk at the nearby lake
Read book at the coffee shop
Visit the sale rack of my favorite clothing store
Write a Substack post
Browse the bookstore and smell the new book smell
Bake
Take a bath
Play at the fragrance counter
Make a photo album
Watch a movie
Visit Trader Joe’s to get my favorite goodies that we never get! Absolutely get a bouquet of fresh flowers
Watch gardening videos
Try new shades/products at the cosmetics counter
Draw with my new set of watercolor brush pens and How to Draw books
Write in my prayer journal
Buy myself new jammies
Play the piano
Brush up on DuoLingo
Bad weather: walk the mall while listening to an audiobook
Now, I force myself during my weekly meeting with Philip to commit to a plan for my break time, and I type it out at the top of my Break Time Menu. This simple little practice is making such a big difference. Decision fatigue is a *real* struggle for me in this season, so looking at my note and treating my plans as my break marching orders feels like such a gift to myself. I like to do whatever I can now to take care of Future Catherine. She needs all the help she can get!
Today’s agenda for my break time:
Go to the coffee shop and get a coffee
Write a Substack post
Read my current books: As Always, Julia: The Letters of Julia Child and Avis DeVoto by Joan Reardon and My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
What items would be on your Break Time Menu? Do you struggle to take a break and rest?
Welp, there’s my timer, so I better press “publish!” Schedule a break for yourself this week. I put a period behind that so that it sounded more like a serious command than anything else because that’s exactly what it is. Take a break. Rest.
Off to read my books!