Maine Creative Momma

Summer has returned here in Maine, and the warm slow days are calling us outside for longer periods in the evening. My little garden is in, a huge thanks to my mom for again helping me figure it out. My babies are running around barefoot (and often bare bottomed) and just being the wild child boys I wake up every day praying they will be.

My sweet husband is working hard – the summers are always his busiest season. He comes home most days exhausted, but still finds the energy to play with the boys, help with dinner and tubbies, and talk to me about my day.

And me? Well, it’s my quieter season at work, so I have a lot more time to just dream. Mostly it’s dreams of getting home and working in the garden or diving into a canning project. I dream of how to extend that peaceful feeling that summer brings, the warmth that fills your soul down to your bones. How to make the soft, slow feeling a bottled product that I can just pull down off the shelf in the middle of January when it’s too cold to even move.

The truth is, I think most days right now I’m dreaming of the future where days are always slow. When my husband and I can be peaceful, not rushing. Our boys are happy, but not spoiled. The days when we can just sit and enjoy each others company.

I think with so many people in my life retiring from work, it’s having a huge impact on how I see myself and the days that are sometimes passing like a bullet train. I’m watching my babies grow in front of me, sometimes it feels like literally. My husband and I are starting to lose parents and aunts/uncles. My sister and I feel like we are constantly running a race to find time to have meaningful conversations in between pumping, and cooking, and laundry, and marriages. Our world is moving at an unstoppable pace that requires constant connection, communication and participation. No one is stopping and saying “I’m good” to the next thing, the next fad, the next promotion.

And truly, I resonate so much with that. Probably because I’m a millennial and we were raised to hustle harder than anyone else you know. We are the age of innovation and the internet. Anything I want to know is on Google. In fact, one of my most memorable professional lessons was: “never ask a question that you could google the answer to”.

But as I’ve gotten older – now the ripe old age of 36 – I feel myself getting tired of that world. I’m tired of the pressure to push forward. I’m tired of the need to be a jack of all trades and a master of everything. Im tired of being asked to give up my peace in order for someone else’s progress.

More and more I’m asking myself, in these quieter pockets of the days, why do we have to wait till we are in our 60s to be slowed down, relax, and be happy? Who came up with this system of hustle as hard, as fast, and as long from the time you’re 18 (or younger) until you’re 65 (or older, or dead)? What the hell is actually the point of all that?

So I’m rebranding this season to not call it my hustle era. I’m calling it my season of waiting. Waiting while I earn enough to slow down. Waiting with joy when I get to make something to put up for the winter. Waiting with patience when the days at my desk feel longer than I want to. Waiting with hope when I long for a silent morning on the front porch, coffee in hand. Waiting with ambition when I think about writing professionally.

Every small chapter in this season of waiting, of being in between the hustle and the rest, I’m filling with things that make the quiet peaceful days more possible. Helping myself become less dependent on the systems. Teaching myself things that some people have forgotten about how to be self sufficient. Talking to my husband about what we both seriously want, how to make it real, and how to make it between now and that next reality.

There is still so much unknown. My world is still so dependent on a full time job and the society that we live in. But in this season of in between and waiting, there’s peace in taking action.

And I hope you find it too 💙