Pinwheels.

Yesterday I made pinwheels with my kids.

I swear this isn’t about to turn into a crafting tutorial or anything. Just bear with me here.

As this was our first time making them there was some trial and error involved.

A lot of “Don’t touch those yet, please.” “Hold on, let me check the instructions.” “Omg! Why are you cutting that!? Wait, wait, wait!!!” moments.

Crafting with kids is honestly just a mess. 😂

The first pinwheel we made was entirely too large. We practically had to empty our lungs just to get it to sort of spin, and no matter where we held the stick we could barely avoid blocking the blades.

It worked, but it was too large. Too hard to manage, and generally inefficient.

So we went back to the drawing board, and made the next one smaller.

This one worked much better. It was easier to avoid blocking the blades, and we didn’t have to use as much air to spin it.

It still wasn’t the most efficient thing, but it was much better.

It was certainly good enough to make the kids happy, and by then my patience was completely fried, so that’s where we stopped.

I was thinking about it today though.

I think we do things like that to ourselves a lot.

Make our pinwheels too big, I mean.

Take on too much. Overload ourselves to the point that we get in our own way.

We stop our momentum, because we’ve made things too heavy. We’ve put too much pressure on ourselves.

I do it to myself all the time. When I do it’s very hard not to get discouraged.

I’ve already done it to myself a few times with this new blog.

I want to keep improving though. Keep going.

I want to pause long enough to take note of the parts of my pinwheel that work, and the parts that could be improved on.

I need to remember that it’s okay to take a break when my patience is at its limit.

Recharging is just as important.

As long as I come back. Keep coming back.

Are there aspects of your life that you can relate this to as well? There are so many directions we could take this metaphor. I’d love to hear others.

As for me, I’m challenging myself.

Challenging myself to keep coming back. To keep improving.

Until that pinwheel works so well I barely have to breathe on it for it to spin.

🌬💖

Oh! If you do happen to want a simple pinwheel tutorial, I quite liked this one in spite of my own poor execution. 😂

Pinwheel Tutorial

✌🏽💕