Tomorrow morning I promised to help a colleague move house, something I generally put my hand up and volunteer for, despite not liking to do it. I have found that often in Finland, it is hard to get people to help with moving and I know how much it can suck to move with not enough hands to help - plus his wife is due in December and it just makes everything a little harder. Sometimes, a little help means more than the effort to actually help. A few hours out of my day, can give them more of theirs - and I might get a slice of pizza - score!
Tomorrow night we are going to go to the neighbors place for a crayfish party, a tradition here for some people in the Autumn, where people eat freshwater crayfish, sing songs and drink. We managed to get Smallsteps to her grandparent's place on short notice, as we weren't originally invited, as they have a tradition with a certain group of friends, but several of them are ill and can't make it - so we are the stand-ins.
Btw, these images I have used a couple times are edits of New Year's Eve sparklers that I took last year, which was meant to be leading into a year of change and better things. Not quite to plan.
But, between moving furniture and eating crayfish, we have to paint the base layer of the upstairs so that we can see if there are any areas that still need spackle and sanding. The surface area is so massive and there is so much going on up there that it difficult to see what is done well enough or not at this point. I am looking forward to getting some paint on, even though it is just a base that will likely require another base later, because it will give us a good idea of what the space will look like clean.
It is going to be a fair bit of work though and will likely run well into Sunday, which means that I am probably not going to be drinking too much at the crayfish party - probably a good thing. Before most of my friends moved out of the city and some case country, we used to have our own annual crayfish party, that were always a hell of a lot of fun, even though there was a little bit of recovery needed. Back then, none of us had children though - so we were a little freer.
But, after a long week and the work the weekend work, it'll be nice to have a few hours off with friends and just chill out a little without having to think too much about the world. I am generally not a person to spend much time avoiding the world, but I also know myself well enough to know when I should get away for a bit. Like helping my colleague move, a little help can go a long way.
The thing with it though is that if not careful, the distraction to reset can become a habitual avoidance which rather than giving time, eats time that could and should be used for other things. I often wonder how much time we as a society these days spend on activities of mass distraction, when we have so many other things to do. With only so much time in the day, balancing activity to best provide for a good life can be difficult in this day and age - especially with so much temptation for distraction available at our fingertips that is designed to tip the scales out of our our favor, to overpower us by targeting our weaknesses.
Time is the most scarce resource we might have as it is needed to find and meet our potential, but it is constantly being taken away from us through a thousand tiny cuts in our stream of attention. Like the sparkler in the picture, we might feel that we have time ahead, but it burns out faster than we thought it would.
Taraz
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