Surging vs. Dwelling

I've been hiding. Hiding from holding myself accountable. To new goals. To endless lists. To my own health counselor. To my health counselor buddies who find me anyways.

Being a self-admitted over-achiever, this hiding out has been a welcome break from my usual approach of throwing my hand up and volunteering to be held accountable for whatever I am planning to be my next big giant goal.


In his blog post "What Consumers Do in a Downtown", Grant McCracken, an anthropologist affiliated with MIT, describes two modalities of consumer behavior. In a surging mentality, the world "teems with new features, new things, new opportunities, new excitement." In a dwelling mentality the consumer is focused not on the future but on the present, we "stop anticipating and start savoring."

So maybe I haven't been hiding so much as dwelling. But it has nothing to do with the economy.

Reality Check

Somewhere around May I got a wake up call that sent me running into my hide-out (aka my home) for a much needed breather and a long session of introspection that has focused largely on my role as a mom.

On Mother's Day week, my children's preschool held a tea for the Moms. My daughter's teacher created a project for the kids to list three things that their mom liked to do. The lists were decorated and posted on a wall and all of us Moms had to "find ourselves" on the wall.

I knew right away that I wasn't the mom who liked to: Eat Cheeseburgers and Swim Underwater. But when I started reading about the moms who liked to "read with me", "pick flowers with me", and "watch me ride my bike", I started getting a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.

And then I saw it. A beautiful pink sheet covered in silk flowers that I recognized immediately:

My Mom Likes to:

Work

Drink Tea

Eat Granola

And there I was. I wanted to cry. No where on my four year old daughter's list was any mention of what I liked to do that involved her.

But she was amazingly accurate. Our lives had changed last year as I went to school and created a new career. And just when I was starting to feel that the transition was becoming too much for all of us, she felt it too.

In one swift moment, I knew our lives would need to change again. This was not the mom I intended to be. This was not the life I had meant for us to have.

So I have been hiding. At home. With my family. Hiding from all my lists of life goals and personal ambitions while I regroup as a woman and a mom.

It has been beautiful and painful all at once. And I am beginning to see how I am now ready to emerge into the next stage of my life with a new perspective on accountablity and self-care.

And a new vision for what my "unpredictable future" can be.

More soon on what that all means...