On holiday we dropped heavily into yin space - the quiet shade of trees away from the beating sun, the underwater calm of tropical waters, the darkness of the jungle where the wind sussarating through bamboo, papaya and mango trees. We need to slow down - the world had just gotten too fast for us, and the only way to do it was to check out of our ordinary lives. To stay at home would have been the death of us - with a list of jobs a mile long we'd cry that we were 'too busy' to breathe.

Dropping out of the hectic pace of our lives gave us time to think, to reflect, to merely BE with all that is. To reflect, to allow for creative thoughts, to think and feel at ease.

However, now we're home, we've dropped back into 'busy'. Except, left with the vestiges of calm from travelling, I'm realising I need to rethink how I see busy. We're too quick to SAY it all the time - if someone asks: 'How have you been?' our reply is so often 'Oh, so busy'. Can't our answer be different?

I love this quote from Thoreau - a reminder that to be busy with things we feel good about and passionate about is a different kind of busy:

So here we are, pottering in our paradise - the home we've built and love so much. Sure, work is going to be a tough one next week, but if we don't work, we don't have the money to live the life we want to live. That one is certainly a work in progress. So as I potter, I add to our busy list - the chalkboard in the kitchen will be full by the end of the week, but we've already worked through some of it. Things are looking good.

It was freezing when we got back from Indonesia - far more so given the contrast between tropical and a Victorian Winter. We'd not had any time to go 'wooding' - the verb we use for collecting fallen wood or scavenging from people's unwanted or fallen trees - so we had to order some in. That's okay - we don't spend a lot on wood, so we'll cop this one on the chin. Better to be warm.

With the wood stacked and the house warm, we can get on with the other things. We're out of flour and Jamie can't eat the rye sourdough from the shop because of his IBS, so I boil potatoes, grab some eggs from the neighbours, and see what else I've got in the fridge - I'd let my son grab all the stuff that might go out of date but thank god he didn't see the goat cheese, which is perfectly fine. A few spinach leaves and some parsley for a make-do omelette gives us enough energy for the afternoon.

We sort out the van, repacking her with winter wetsuits ready for an afternoon surf, which I'm dreading, as it's going to be super cold. I still haven't got myself a pair of booties, but I figure an hour in the water isn't going to kill me - is it?

Jamie's cleaning out the shed and making space for Buttercup because he's getting a new chassis shipped down from Queensland and is going to pull her apart to put her on the new (and better) chassis as well as put a new bulkhead on her, so that's him down for the next few months. My uncle George, also a mechanic and a Gemini will be working on that whilst I'm at a meditation conference next weekend (paid for by work, really looking forward to it!). He's pulled out my old bike to make room and I'm thinking maybe I should fix it up a bit and go for a ride - it's been a few years. Can you spot the picture of Stonehenge in the garage? It was given to Jamie years ago by some random guy - a wierd story - it has a rip on the canvas but we like it anyway. It reminds us of our other life in the UK.

The vegetable patch is looking okay - it needs a good weed, dammit, but it's been a bit slow because it's been cold. The broccoli, kale and other greens are doing well, and I pull out swedes and some spring onions and tell the parsley to grow some more, because I'm missing big fat bunches of parsley in my food.

We get down to the sea a little late - the tides wrong, but the surf's pumping. It's freezing standing there watching the sun go down, and I realise my thicker winter suit has a hole in it so decide to order one online from Need Essentials, which are a company that does budget but really quality wetsuits. Plus, I need booties before I truly brave that water.

We then go and see my sister, where my brother in law cooks up a great fried rice with a hoison style sauce with chicken, and a lemon pudding. My parents are also there, and Dad's just had his second last chemo treatment and feels good enough to have a wine with us. He plays guitar with my nephews and I know that each and everyone of us in that room is glad that we're all together, and Dad's still kicking.

So I'm rethinking busy. Sure, we gotta go to work this week to earn a living, and there's a list of things to do a mile long just to keep things ticking over smoothly - the mundane things, like washing being done and the bills being paid and all the other things that we're obligated to do. But there's so much of our lives that are good, and filled with things that we love, so we're going to smash the busy myth and say something else next time someone asks us how we are!

How do you feel about being busy? Do you wish you had more time, or do you just need to rethink how you feel about busy?

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