My new mantra.

"The days are long but the years are fast with kids."

I came across this article in my Facebook feed today: Breaking Up with Guilt. It's an important piece about letting go of guilt and regret. How no one ever says "I wish I'd spent more time at work" or "watching TV" or "on twitter", and how we should be living the lives we want, rather than guilting ourselves out of them. It's all around good advice, though not necessarily as easily achievable as dropping everything and moving to the country. But still. I try to live my life guilt-free (in terms of how I spend my time, at least), and I'd say I make it about, oh, say 10% of the time. I clearly have some work to do...

But this one line caught my attention. It is such a short and simple sentiment, but captures everything I feel about raising children in a small, neat package. The days are long, but the years are short. I am living that, daily. It seems like just yesterday that my second son was born (5 months ago), and last week that my first was born (3 years ago). Some days fly by - those are the really good days, when everything just flows and works - and some just seem to drag. Those are the tired days. The days where everything goes wrong and I just. Can't. Even. But how has it been 3 years since I held that little marvel in my arms for the first time? Almost four since the second little blue line on the pregnancy test stick? More importantly, how do I slow it down? How do I let the tears and tantrums and every day frustrations roll off my back, and focus on the big picture? The hugs, the kisses, the smiles, the laughter. Knowing that in 20 years time, I won't remember any of the bad moods or tantrums; I'll only remember that time we went to Disney World, and how much fun we had. Or the overwhelming feelings of love and fierce protection. The bedtime stories. The songs. Listening to Winnie the Pooh in the car.

I don't think anyone is exempt from monotony, and there are things we all have to do every day, whether we'd like to or not, but I think there is room in my life to rearrange some priorities. The problem for me is that I don't know where to start, or how to achieve these lofty goals. Ideally, I'd love to live overseas, in Europe, or Japan, or New Zealand, have a big enough piece of property for a garden, maybe a few animals, and a cozy little house. Somewhere close enough to amenities to not be daunting for day trips, but far enough away for some peace and privacy. But how to achieve that? No idea. There is only so much you can accomplish without an income stream, and since I don't foresee becoming suddenly independently wealthy in our future, I guess one of us will need a job. So I suppose it starts with finding a job...? Or maybe it starts with deciding where we'd like to be?

I do know that right now we are focused on getting our lives organized - maximizing the space in our small house, getting rid of stuff we don't need. It's taking longer than I'd like - there are never enough hours in the day - but it's an important job that needs to be done. Maybe part of that process needs to be figuring out how to set aside some money for trips, or a possible move? All I know is that right now, we are working our asses off, hoping that the pay-off will be that we get to do whatever we want at the end, when we retire. But why waste the prime years of our lives just trying to survive to retirement? What if we spent this time doing exactly what we want, instead of waiting for some mythical time in the future? I can't think of a better gift to ourselves, and our children.