Last week marked a year here at Snow Day. As I said in my very first post, “I decided to invest more of my days with that snow day feel – space and pace…A walk through the snow makes it easy to taste and see what’s holy. But there is holiness everywhere, every day. I’m trying to leave enough room to notice that.”
I’m not all the way there yet. I caught myself in a tizzy in December, fretting aloud to my husband about the craziness of my schedule that week and the domino-effect of changing one teeny thing in the line-up. In full-out rant, I stumbled upon a deep truth as I blurted out, “I do this to myself!”
Then again, we took a Snow Day Weekend before students returned in January and it was the deepest relaxation I’ve experienced in a long time. The fact that there was no actual snow involved should probably count as significant progress.
Relevant Magazine recently ran a piece about what to ask yourself before posting to social media. The whole thing is good, thoughtful advice, but the question that has stuck with me is this one: Is this a moment to protect? The author talks about our cultural tendencies to interrupt ourselves in the midst of intimate, important moments in order to “share” those online.
But the question hangs there for me, implicating other tendencies. Is this a moment to protect?
I’m not picturing a smothering “protection” based in fear or controlling behavior. I’m picturing the way tented plastic protects fragile plants from an early frost. Just enough cover to allow them to grow and thrive, to assist in what they are already trying to do.
A year in, I’m still looking for more internal snow days. I’m not holding out for real snow days to do the work for me (though I’m ready any time, Mother Nature!) and I’m trying to rely less on permission from others. This little plastic tent of a blog has afforded me a few protected moments and I hope it has for you. Thank you for being part of the journey.
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Photo credits: © 2008 Axel Kristinsson, CC BY 2.0 ; © 2007 Tess Watson, CC BY 2.0