What's Normal?
When I manage to meet what I think of as a "normal" routine, I get an extraordinary sense of peace and accomplishment. A sort of empty, dry feeling, if that makes sense. Like I'm a clean ceramic pitcher, just placed on a decorative shelf.
I mean stuff like last night I packed myself a lunch, took a shower, AND got my hair combed and braided.
And then, immediately in the afterglow of such unheard of accomplishment, I think, "Well, normal people do this every day. It's only an accomplishment because I'm a total slacker."
I realize that maybe I'm being too hard on myself, assuming that "everyone else" (the so-called "normal" people) gets this much done every day. Maybe they go to bed with wet hair, too?
As a kid, I was very hung up on "Normal". It seemed our life was anything but. NORMAL people got all their homework done and cooked dinner and ate it and had all the dishes washed EVERY DAY. Why couldn't I be normal??
Honestly? Because it's exhausting, doing all those mundane little chores, and it's easy to say "that can wait - now it's time to work on a pet project!" My childhood home was full of half-sewn and half-crochetted things and art supplies strewn across the dinning room table.
(Sigh. "Normal" people have their table all cleaned off! All the time!")
My home is still not "normal". We move the piles around to get at flat surfaces a bit better than we did growing up, but there are still piles. The pile of armor. The pile of SCA-projects. The pile of yarn.
So - my question is: how normal am I? Are there really people who get everything done? And if so, how the heck do they do it??
I mean stuff like last night I packed myself a lunch, took a shower, AND got my hair combed and braided.
And then, immediately in the afterglow of such unheard of accomplishment, I think, "Well, normal people do this every day. It's only an accomplishment because I'm a total slacker."
I realize that maybe I'm being too hard on myself, assuming that "everyone else" (the so-called "normal" people) gets this much done every day. Maybe they go to bed with wet hair, too?
As a kid, I was very hung up on "Normal". It seemed our life was anything but. NORMAL people got all their homework done and cooked dinner and ate it and had all the dishes washed EVERY DAY. Why couldn't I be normal??
Honestly? Because it's exhausting, doing all those mundane little chores, and it's easy to say "that can wait - now it's time to work on a pet project!" My childhood home was full of half-sewn and half-crochetted things and art supplies strewn across the dinning room table.
(Sigh. "Normal" people have their table all cleaned off! All the time!")
My home is still not "normal". We move the piles around to get at flat surfaces a bit better than we did growing up, but there are still piles. The pile of armor. The pile of SCA-projects. The pile of yarn.
So - my question is: how normal am I? Are there really people who get everything done? And if so, how the heck do they do it??