So I’m starting something new here:
Fall Resolutions.

Not a giant list of things I’m going to overhaul before inevitably abandoning them, but one or two things I want to be more intentional about as we head into a new season.

I’m Always Trying to Get Somewhere

I’ve realized I have a tendency to treat my life like there is somewhere I am supposed to be getting to. And not only do I need to get there—I need to get there quickly, because I already feel like I’m ten steps behind. So I’m always trying to catch up. Finish this so I can start that. Get through this part so I can move on to the next one. Figure out the most efficient way to do something so I can fit three more things into the space I just created.

There’s an anxiousness underneath all of it. This feeling that I should be further along than I am. The problem is, I don’t actually know where “there” is. There will always be another project. Another goal. Another idea. Another thing I could learn or improve or make better. I’m rushing toward a finish line that keeps moving.

I Am Not A Creature of Habit

I think this is also why I’m so drawn to change. I am not naturally a creature of habit, although I desperately want to be one. I love the idea of being someone who wakes up at the same time, drinks the same coffee, eats the same breakfast, and happily follows her perfectly predictable little morning routine. Meanwhile, I don’t even make my coffee the same way every morning. People ask me for recipes and I’m like, I don’t know. I’ve made that meal 98 times and 97 of those times I made it differently.

Even my version of meal prep is designed around this. I don’t want seven identical containers of chicken, rice, and broccoli waiting for me in the refrigerator because I already know that by Tuesday I’ll look at them and decide I want something completely different. Instead, I prep proteins and ingredients I can turn into different meals throughout the week. It’s meal prep designed specifically around the fact that Future Me cannot be trusted to want what Past Me planned.

My Brain Interprets Movement As Progress.

If I’m tweaking something, reorganizing something, starting a different system or finding a better way, I feel productive. I feel like I’m doing something. But sometimes I’m just running really fast in one place. There’s plenty of movement. Plenty of effort. I’m certainly tired. I just haven’t actually gone anywhere.

I’ll decide I’m going to journal. But obviously I need a notebook. Then I need a pen. Actually, maybe I don’t like this notebook. Maybe what I really need is a planner. No, not that planner. A different planner. When I was studying, I’d suddenly become convinced that the reason I couldn’t focus was because I needed different Post-its or better highlighters. Eventually you have to admit that perhaps the problem is not the highlighter.

I joke about blaming my ADHD. Sometimes I blame being a Sagittarius. Whatever the reason, my brain loves the little rush that comes with changing something. And sometimes I wonder if I’m a little addicted to feeling productive. Doing the same thing doesn’t feel productive. Sitting still definitely doesn’t feel productive. If something can be done faster, why wouldn’t I do it faster? If I can fit another thing into the day, why wouldn’t I? If there’s a better system, shouldn’t I figure it out?

The problem is that when I’m always thinking that way, the things that actually make up my life can start feeling like obstacles standing between me and everything I’m trying to accomplish.

This Isn’t The Interruption

Right now, I have newborn twins. And newborn life is repetitive in a way almost nothing else is.

Feed. Burp. Change. Sleep. Repeat.

And repeat.

And repeat.

Some days it genuinely feels like Groundhog Day. And sometimes I catch myself rushing through it. Not because I don’t enjoy my babies. Not because I don’t want to take care of them. It’s because my brain is already ten steps ahead.

I’ll be feeding one of them and thinking, Okay, let me finish this bottle so I can answer that email. Let me get them settled so I can work on the website. Let me change this diaper so I can get back to what I was doing. And lately I’ve started catching myself in those moments and realizing that feeding my babies isn’t standing between me and the life I’m trying to build.

And I’ve started catching myself in those moments and realizing:

One day they won’t need me to sit there and feed them every few hours. My son won’t always be little. This exact version of our family isn’t going to exist forever, and I don’t want to look back and realize I spent it mentally somewhere else because what was happening right in front of me didn’t feel productive enough. I don’t want every feeding to be something I need to finish or every quiet moment to immediately become an opportunity to get something done. I don’t want to spend my entire life preparing for the next part of it.

Where exactly am I in such a hurry to get to?

The irony is that I even did it while writing this post. I bounced from consistency to productivity to slowing down to failure to being present— I was doing the exact thing I was trying to write about. I couldn’t even sit with one thought without trying to get to the next one.

Maybe part of the answer is learning to be more comfortable with repetition. For a long time, I think I’ve interpreted doing the same thing again as stagnation. If I’m doing the same thing, I’m not moving. If nothing is changing, nothing is happening. But maybe I’ve had that backwards. Sometimes life is making the oatmeal again, doing the workout again, using the planner you already bought, making a dinner you’ve made before, feeding the baby again, sitting on the couch, and holding her for a few extra minutes even though there are ten other things you could be doing.

There doesn’t always have to be an accomplishment waiting on the other side. Maybe doing the same thing again isn’t standing still. Maybe sometimes it’s just living.

My Fall Resolution

This is probably where I’d give myself a plan. I’d come up with a routine, make some rules, find a way to track it, and probably buy a notebook. But I don’t want to turn being present into another thing I’m trying to accomplish efficiently. I don’t need to slow down because slowing down will somehow make me more productive later.

I just want to get better at noticing when I’m rushing through something because my brain has already decided whatever comes next is more important. I want to repeat things that work without feeling like I’m standing still. I want to sit with my babies without mentally calculating what I could be getting done. I want to have an ordinary Tuesday without trying to optimize it into a better Tuesday.

There’s a quote hanging over our bed that says, “And together they built a life they loved.” It’s been there so long that I barely notice it anymore, but lately I’ve been thinking about it differently. I spend so much time thinking about the life we’re building—where we want to go, what I want to create, what I want our home to look like, what comes next—that somewhere in all of that building, I think I forgot to look around.

Because we really have built a life we love.

It isn’t finished. Of course it isn’t. There are places we want to go, things we want to change, rooms I want to redo, goals I want to reach, and approximately a million things I still want to do. But this isn’t the part before my life starts. This is the life. It’s bottles on the counter and toys everywhere. It’s feeding babies and making dinner and doing the same bedtime routine we did yesterday. It’s my husband and me figuring everything out as we go. It’s projects I might finish and ideas I might abandon. It’s ordinary Tuesdays that don’t feel particularly important while they’re happening.

I don’t want to be so busy trying to build a life I love that I rush through the one we already built.

So maybe that’s really my Fall Resolution. Not to become more productive or find the perfect routine, and not even to “slow down” because I’ve found some new way to make slowing down productive. I just want to stop living like I’m ten steps behind a life that’s waiting for me somewhere up ahead.

There is nowhere else I need to be right now. I’m already here.