I recently started swimming again. Something that I have been saying that I wanted to do for years but have never put that much effort into. I was a swimmer in high school. Correction, I was a water polo player 1st (I still very much have a polo player's form with a much stronger upper body than lower and a tendency to drop my hips when I get tired) and a competitive swimmer 2nd. I wasn't particularly great at it, but I enjoyed it and look on that time in my life with a great deal of nostalgia.
But in trying to practice the 3 R's of adulthood, I got back into the water. While I've taken my kids swimming in the neighborhood pool plenty of times, I've been in a lap pool maybe a handful of times in the last 15 years. I thought getting back in the water would feel weird. Or uncomfortable. Or foreign. My plan for the first time back was just trying to get to 10 laps. 10 laps. That's the goal. I could do that. (For context, during swim practices, we probably swam somewhere in the ballpark 200-500 laps a day) It was a baby step. But it felt like it was something I might be able to do. I was wrong though. It didn't feel weird or too hard or uncomfortable. It felt amazing. It felt like coming home. And my first day in, it felt so good that I swam 20 laps.
I thought the highlights of swimming would be the physical benefits and the sentimental fondness to smell of chlorine (it's weird, I know, but most formers swimmers like it, I swear!). But I was wrong on that one, too. It was the space. Space that was my own where no one could reach me. There were no snacks being requested, no butts to wipe, no laundry to fold and put away, no texts or emails to respond to, no work problems to solve. It was just me and the water. I am personally terrible at sitting in silence. Can't do it when I'm driving or walking or just doing whatever. I need to listen to an audiobook or a podcast or music. But there's something about being in the water that doesn't bother me about the quiet. It's peaceful and I don't mind sitting with my own thoughts there. I like just listening to the sounds of my own strokes.
One of Queen Sass' favorite movies is Moana. Because it's a favorite and the music is incredibly catchy, we have seen this 9,265,834 times. I am not joking. I can probably quote 80-90% of it. But my favorite scene is when Maui explains what wayfinding is. It's so deep and applicable to life, though I seriously struggle with creating the space for that. I don't really know where I want to go in my mind. Many of my "accomplishments" have been achieved by unintentionally stumbling into them and then just working really hard at it because I didn't know what the other options were. But in Leading from the Outside, Stacey Abrams beautifully points out that "indecision effectively applied is a great way to figure out [what you want next]. Give yourself the space to explore what you want. Finding your ambition demands that you allow yourself the time and energy to understand what holds you back from defining what you want."
I still don't really know where I want to go, even with this blog. But I've really been liking the space to think it out uninterrupted. Some days, the time is spent really deeply mulling over something. Some days, I'm just counting laps. But I like that the space is mine and I'm learning to build in the habit regularly and find that I'm a much better mom and wife when I give myself this space. Last week, I hit a major goal and swam a mile (72 laps). I was really proud of myself. But want to know who was even happier? The kids, who then leveraged it into getting Yogurtland to "celebrate Mama" and honestly, I was in such a good mood, I was happy to let them win that one.
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