Many of us have spent the last year pining for the things we were once allowed to do. Sure, there were the basics, like going to work and school with other humans, but there were also all the extras—things like in-person volunteering, the piano lessons one kid took, and the other kid’s volleyball games, golfing with buddies, that favorite yoga class, happy hours with friends, and the kids’ swim lessons on weekends. Our lives ground to a halt and it was not okay; and yet, what we’ve forgotten—what may now even seem like a luxury—is how freaking over-scheduled we were.
I find myself wanting to sign up for every last thing as it becomes available again: every weeklong summer camp for my son to make up for the full summer he stayed home, every sport he wants to play, every local outdoor concert, every last damn thing that seems safe enough to try. But part of the reason why the shut-down was such a shock to the system is the sheer amount of things we had to do on any given day—and the way it all got cancelled, one by one. We were over-scheduled, and we knew it, but we also didn’t know how to un-schedule.
Erin Loechner, author of Chasing Slow: Courage to Journey Off the Beaten Path, tells the Washington Post that there’s an opportunity for us right now:
“As we reintegrate into a changed society,” Loechner says, “can we maintain the steadiness of home when society encourages us to tether ourselves elsewhere? We’ve survived the pandemic of COVID-19, but we have yet to conquer the pandemic of hurriedness. Now’s our chance to be deliberate in carving out a new, sustainable rhythm for ourselves and each other.”
This is our chance, guys. This is our opportunity to hit “do-over” and start to wade back into normal life without allowing our day-to-day lives to become overburdened—once again—with car pools, appointments, practices, and whatever else we were running ourselves ragged doing before. So if you want to start filling up your calendar a little more thoughtfully this time around, here’s what I suggest.
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But first! A pandemic caveat
I write all this during a time when more adults are getting vaccinated every day—but case numbers are still high, and our kids aren’t vaccinated. We will (or at least we should) ease back into something resembling normalcy, but things won’t be Normal (with a capital N) for a while. However, I think that’s exactly why it’s good to think about this now, before we’re back in the thick of life-as-we-knew-it and once again looking around and asking ourselves, “When did things get too busy again?”
With that being said, now is the time to:
Take some time to think
There’s no emergency here—you have time to be deliberate. Start simple by thinking about what your family has really missed during this past year. In my case, we figured out that our 10-year-old very much missed the camaraderie of his soccer team; karate, on the other hand, he’s just kind of over. The combination of the two meant that he was off doing something almost every night during the week and at least once, if not twice, on the weekends. So, he’ll play soccer again, and we’ll wait a bit before considering whether he wants to add another less-time-intensive activity to his plate.
Maybe you figured out that instead of spreading yourself thin volunteering for three different organizations, you actually want to dive a little deeper and devote quality time to the one organization that is closest to your heart. If you take the time to think about how you (and the rest of the family) were spending time before versus now, you may find that some things were causing more of a mental, emotional, and physical drain than they were worth.
Call a family meeting
I’m a big fan of the family sit-down when there are fundamental family values to discuss, and that’s ultimately what this is. For everyone in the family who is old enough to think semi-critically, give them a heads up that you want to talk about how you’ll plan the family’s time and activities going forward. Encourage them to reflect on what they’ve missed most during the pandemic, and what’s felt like more of a relief to be rid of.
Reiterate that this isn’t about taking away activities they enjoyed or forcing them to stay home; it’s about prioritizing those things. Gather as a group and discuss what each person wants to prioritize personally, as well as what the family as a whole feels is important.
Protect some time
It’s easy to fill up a calendar when that space is blank, all pure and clean and waiting to be filled in. So fill it in—with whatever you decide, as a family, that you want to continue doing.
During the pandemic, our son developed a love of hiking—a thing he previously thought to be extremely boring but which I have loved for years. Now that we won’t have to devote every Saturday morning to karate, maybe we can pencil in a couple of weekend hikes every month. If I write them in now (weather permitting), that time won’t end up allocated to something else less fulfilling.
Things can always be moved around later, if necessary, but if you start off these next several months more intentional about how you allocate your free time, you can create a better balance that is somewhere between “totally over-scheduled” and “stuck at home with nothing to do.”
