On summer, the urgent and the important, and all of the snacks.

My boys finish summer camp this week, which marks our halfway point of summer and I cannot get over how fast it’s all going. Six weeks of summer camp, and soon we’re on to six weeks of…. free and easy summer. (Which, let’s be honest, sounds idyllic but potentially means trying to keep my boys from killing each other for six weeks straight, because that’s a LOT of togetherness. But mostly I’m really excited and grateful for that kind of time with them here in my favorite season. )

It feels like we’ve sped through the last six weeks the way I listen to my audio books: on 1.5x speed. At least. 

This morning, I was reading about differentiating between things that are urgent and things that are important, and it was exactly what I needed to hear heading into this final stretch of summer.

Sometimes it feels like in this season of motherhood, everything is urgent: getting everyone where they need to be. Getting to Costco, again. Dentist appointments. All of those freaking snacks and cups of water. And obviously, those truly are things that need to get done.

But if we’re not careful, we forget the things that are truly important in favor of the things that feel urgent in the moment. 

So I was thinking this morning about what’s really important to me, right now.

With my kids, that means taking time to really PLAY with them. Cal, almost 4, all the time, says: “mama, wanna pway wif me?” And most often I’m thinking: but I need to go switch that laundry, did I run the dishwasher or did I just put the pod in and forget to push the start button again, I have to find their water bottles, did I get those doctor’s appointments scheduled? And so I’ll say, “give me a few minutes, ok bud?” trying to blitz through some of the eternal list. But then, too often, I never get around to sitting down to play.  

It’s like some sort of irritating magic trick because I swear I’m constantly cleaning my house and working on that list and yet, the house is never all that clean and the list is never even close to complete. So I’m going to endeavor to put it all aside more often, especially during these magical summer months, and just play. 

And for all of the personal things that I want to do and achieve, it’s the same story. My goals for this summer were to write more, which I’m doing OK with, but also to finish the illustrations for a children’s book that I wrote. Completing and publishing this is SO important to me. This would for sure be the thing I’d be on my death bed someday thinking, I cannot believe I never finished that dang book.

But guess how much progress I’ve made this summer on that one? None. Well, like one page. But it’s not because I’ve been lazy; I’ve been Highly Productive, in fact. Things are running quite smoothly around here. It’s just that I always believe my own lies when I tell myself that I’ll get to it after I finish up the day’s list. You know—the one that I never complete?

There’s a great analogy that uses sand and rocks to demonstrate managing the urgent and important: if you fill a jar (life) with sand (urgent tasks) first, there is no room for large rocks (things that are truly important.) On the other hand, if you start by placing the rocks in the jar, the sand find the cracks in between and filters down, all fitting quite nicely.

Life moves so fast—I can’t even believe I’m planning my baby’s 7th birthday right now—and it’s easy to get lost in those lists in our head. But I think the real beauty is to be found in the moments that we rise up and out of our own heads to look down at all of the good and the dreams and think to ourselves, yep: this is the important stuff. This is the stuff that matters. (Maybe not as much as that snack though. Snacks are sanity. And also insanity?)

Here’s to the important things this summer, friends. <3