Rhythm

Along with finding my sewing machine again this week, I also have managed to sit down at my spinning wheel every day. Like the sewing machine, it had been neglected for months. It's too bad, really, because I find sitting and spinning to be very calming. When I started to spin again, after we moved two years ago, it was a pretty steep learning curve. It was just like starting from the beginning, except without a teacher this time around. I gradually have become better at it, but it wasn't quite so natural as it was when I last stopped the first time around.

Sometimes seems to have happened over the past few months, as if my brain and muscles finally put all the pieces together again, because when I sat down at the wheel earlier this week, it just felt easy. I found I could sit and spin without the problems I had been encountering... breaking the yarn (a lot), too thick, too thin, too out of control. It finally felt right.

I had been thinking about why, and I think I know what was up for the past two years. I was pedaling the wheel too fast, which caused to much twist in the yarn along with all the other problems I was having. The second I slowed down to a calm easy tempo, it was easy. That is until a child starts to play music that had a different tempo and everything gets muddled up. That was actually my clue to what was happening.

Not too fast, but steady. I've been thinking about this a lot this week.

The same goes for me finally figuring out the rhythm needed for jumping at my riding lesson. It is really all about the steadiness of the rhythm... moving, but not too fast and at an even rhythm. Anything else and you and the horse become unbalanced and work against each other.

Anything else and your yarn twists too much and breaks, or you lose control, or both.

It makes me wonder how many other things in life is this true for. How many of us really succeed when we are rushing? Rushing trying to squeeze too many tasks into too little time. Rushing trying to take children to too many activities with no free time built in. Rushing because we have lost the rhythm of our life, or perhaps because we never found our rhythm in the first place.

I know I am so much calmer and content when I am not rushing. Sometimes it's a matter of being realistic about what I can actually accomplish in a given day. Other times it is a matter of getting up a little bit earlier so that I can start the day taking care of the things which need to happen. And, honestly, sometimes it is just moving away from the screen and re-engaging with the actual world around me.

My goal this week is to stop rushing. It never makes me happy, and is not actually that productive anyway. I want to maintain a better, more even life rhythm. If I do find myself rushing, I want to take some time to figure out why. Did I not allow enough time? Get up early enough? Plan too much? Today was not rushed, yet we were productive. I came to the end of it not feeling exhausted, but appropriately tired. I never felt as though I left a trail of chaos in my wake because there was no time to complete a previous task. It would be glorious if each day could end feeling like this.

Anyone care to join in me in being thoughtful about your rushing? Or maybe I'm the only one who finds rushing to be enervating.