I'm Going to the Woods

Well, first of all, I am beyond irritated.

I wrote this post last night on my phone and thought I both saved it and published it.

I apparently did neither. So I am going to attempt to re-write what I have already written once.

It's guaranteed to be not nearly as good as yesterday when I was in the moment, but what's a girl to do?!

So here's what I was thinking last night:



When you're in the business of direct sales, your only job is relationships.

Build relationships, foster relationships, find new relationships. I think you get the idea.

And it recently occurred to me that since I started selling Scentsy (more than four years ago), I have never stepped away from all of it.

We've taken vacations and taken time off, but I've never really stepped away.

It's hard to just step away when all you're supposed to do is love and encourage the people who are on this journey with you.

And to be honest, I am not in the encouraging mood right now.

I'm uninspired, unmotivated, and simply unenthusiastic.

So, I think it's time.

The timing is perfect. Brian is off this week. The kids are at home. There is no better time than now.

So, I'm going to do it. I'm going to do my best to ignore my phone, ignore Facebook, ignore my emails (even though I know that will create more work for me later), and just be.

I need a break.

I miss the kind of break you get as a school teacher. I would finalize grades, turn out the lights, lock the door to my classroom, and not think a thing about my job for two weeks until school resumed again at the start of the new year. That's the kind of break I need.

No lists. No plans. No to-dos.

Let's be honest, there may be a few to-do lists here and there this week, but I'm not filling out my planner. I'm going to attempt to just hang out.

I want to run, to read, to play with my kids, to take baths because I can, not because I'm exhausted. And I want to write. Oh, how I want to write just to write. Not at the end of a day when everything did not get done, when I'm exhausted and broken, but I want to write because I can and I love to. I want to write intentionally.

I want to pray and read my Bible and seek God.

I just want to be.

So I'm stepping back for a while. A week at least. It almost sounds indulgent, but I know I need it. I need to remember who I am, and why I do this.

I need to catch up on me and my babies and my husband and my God.

I know He has great things planned for us in the year to come. I can only imagine His plan. I no longer attempt to create one in my mind because I know it will only go astray with His will in mind as we seek Him more and more.

I just need to be me for a while. Away from it all. Surrounded by the ones I love more than life. Being inspired. Having fun. Disconnected from fast pace living that we call life.

It's not a bad idea.

I'll still be here, of course. Every day. This is different. Maybe my writing will be good for once. I guess you'll just have to wait and see what the week holds.

Thinking of all this time away from "work" makes me repeat the words I memorized in junior English over and over again, "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately."

Walden by Henry David Thoreau is a classic that ends up on many English curriculums about the author's search for a simplified life. We memorized these words in English class:

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms...

So I guess you could say, I'm going to the woods.

.....day 136 of a year of writing.....