I am downsizing my life. For the first time in years I am finding myself spending hours outside, or at work, or watching TV… without being near a computer. I haven’t been catching up very well on my forums. I have even gotten behind in my blog reads since Vegas. I am still checking a few things, but I’m really seriously cutting back.

With blogs and journals I’m cutting back to those that I check frequently, whom I feel aquainted with, instead of lurking on tons of them. I just don’t have the energy to stretch myself thin. If I’m going to do something I want to invest myself into it. I want to create more real friendships and connections to other people, instead of skirting around the edges. (Unfortunately there are more than a few blogs/journals of people whom I really do feel a friendship with, but I can’t read it without getting emotional because of baby talk. So I hope those people don’t feel like their friendship isn’t important to me.)

On my forums I am unsubscribing to a lot of random forums, especially parent/baby-related. I was hanging on to them… why? I’m not sure. I couldn’t let go, even after I lost Devin… I wanted to keep hanging around that world. But as I slowly find new hobbies, new interests, I’m able to let go of those things that cause me pangs of sadness. I’m able to stop hanging around places that remind me of what I’ve lost. I hope to go back to them someday, when they stand for things in my future again, rather than things in my past. But for right now there is no purpose for me to be reading threads about baby bottles or cool playmats.

I’ve been spending a lot of time at work. Tuesday I got to work at around 10, stayed until a meeting at 6:30, and didn’t get home until 9. Wednesday I got there at 11 and stayed until 6:30. Today I was there from 12 until 2. Tomorrow I plan to be there all day again. I’m not even getting paid for all of the hours that I’m there, I get paid for 10 hours a week, the rest is volunteer. But I go because… well, I enjoy it. I am currently re-doing all their paperwork procedures, creating new forms, re-organizing all their files… it’s a lot of fun to me. I love to organize paperwork. And they are really really happy about that.

Less computer time combined with sleeping less have given me a lot of free time, even despite all the time I’m spending at work. It’s weird having so much time in a day.

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My gardens are doing well enough. I am discovering I have preferences for things. (Who would have thought I’d not only plant things, but have a preference about what to plant? Ha.) I currently definitely have a fondness for my veggie plants. I feel like growing something for a season in order to get fruit is… rewarding. Fun, if you can call it that.

With few exceptions (my strawberries, which happen to be my only non-fruit that I planted, but they are located in my veggie garden) everything will give fruit and then die. You might think that would make me feel worse instead of better, but I really like the idea of starting fresh next year. I will be able to correct the newbie mistakes that I’ve made so far and will continue making. I can change the placement of plants, shuffle things around.

On the other hand, the flower gardens have been causing me a lot of anxiety. I don’t know where to put things! Take what I know about growing veggies, remove 9/10 of that, and that’s how much I know about growing flowers. My previous version of tending flower gardens was to tell my husband, “I like that. It’s pretty. Plant it.” And he’d do so. I would marvel from afar. So now I have to consider all these things… when they flower, what kind of light they do best in, what color they will bloom (so therefor what I should plant with it), how much space it needs, whether it’s an annual or perennial (and then I had to keep trying to figure out which one means “will come back” and which one means “will die”)… just walking through the nursery at the garden center has me wanting to grab my phone and call Den and screech, “Heeelllppp!” Flower gardens make me think I’ve jumped in way too far and am drowning.

My MIL, an avid gardener, said something to me that has stuck with me. When I expressed to her the anxiety around where to plant things and how to arrange them she said, “But you can always dig them up and move them.” I was all, “Oh, you can do that?” Smack forehead. Seriously, I didn’t know you could do that. I thought once you planted something it stayed there forever because if you touched it it will die. Or something. I don’t really know where my train of thought was going, but it obviously didn’t take into consideration the possibility of moving plants. I guess they are hardier than I gave them credit for. My plants just seem so darn delicate, I feel like just watering them will somehow kill them. (You should see my poor little flowers I bought, they all keel over when you get water on them. It makes me very nervous.)

I am learning that plants are living, growing things – not stationary decorations. They’re this weird in-between… you can’t move them around at will (which, with me, would be every day as I tweaked the arrangement), but you don’t have to commit to one placement for the rest of it’s life either. I think it’s good therapy for me. Even if it makes me twitch a little. Or, okay, a lot.