Challenges of day-to-day life

I have been truly busy in the past month. In order for my leave (from my job for a year) to be fruitful, I needed to create some free time to myself. For those who have children, they are well aware of the fact that the younger they are, the more attention and energy is needed to care for them. What I needed was 4-5 hours, uninterrupted, with peace of mind; and to know that my son is well taken care of and happy. So I started to probe different childcare options.
First, I interviewed several nannies. I was not impressed at all. Most people that I interviewed were not warm, and were emotionally distant. I was disappointed and it pushed me towards the direction of finding a good daycare.
In greater New York City area, there is definitely lack of good daycares. Many children are born every year in the City which need care and due to the high demand, there is not much competition to improve the quality of service. When I began the search, I created a list of attributes of what I considered to be an acceptable quality. The first ten daycares I visited didn't meet my minimums of standards. Some had old-fashioned discipline policy (punishment for correcting behavior), some had religious attitude (I am an agnostic, I don't want my son to learn to say the grace at the table or pray, I consider that brainwashing from early childhood), or the lack of qualified teachers. The more I would look, the more desperate the landscape would seem to be. However at 14th place that I saw, I was positively impressed. The place met most of my important psychological attributes that I would care about. Well, no place is perfect. There may not be much of outdoor playing area, but I can be sure of emotionally-balanced teachers care for my son and help him grow.
Today is the end of his first week at school and he seems to be happy and adapting well. I am getting used to the luxury of having 4-5 hours of time per day to myself. I am detoxifying from last year's pressure at work. I am gradually creating a list of what I want to do this year, list of books I wish to read, and the classes I would like to attend. I feel more happy and calm. I am finally creating a space of my own.

Day to day life and the issue of repetition

There are many days or periods of our lives that days come and go with a boring routine and similarity. These days have one or more common thread that passes through them; be it the period of being a student and writing a dissertation, job search, childcare specially when the little one is sick, a routine monotonous job that doesn't inspire you,etc. In our lives, responsibilities, the need for survival, and in general the larger underlying structures of the society for order and survival, put us in an undesirable situation of unending repetitions in our daily life. After a while, when you are trapped in one of these cycles, your mind makes you believe that there is no way out of this cycle. Let's say when you are in the process of research and writing your thesis, it feels to you that it will never end, and there is no prospect of graduation. When days repeat themselves with minor fluctuations in their schedule and content, it gives us the impression of a predictable, stable, monotonous , and a boring life to some degree.

Repetition gives us the impression of stability and predictability. Some individuals like it and it provides the feeling of security to them; to the other ones it makes them depressed and conjures the feeling of being trapped in a time loop that they can't get out of.

As a person belonging to the second group, I am trying various ways to get out of this time loops on daily basis. Sometime you don't have the luxury of arranging a new event (such as inspirational,recreational or educational or etc.) in your days, every day or even often. Since this is truly a state of our mind, I thought, why shouldn't we be able to change the state of our mind by an exercise to eliminate this repetitious cycle? Instead of waking up in the morning and being filled with the expectation of going through the day as we did yesterday and the day before, or last week, or last month, we can think of a brand new day, full of possibilities and taking nothing for granted. In this way, we can go through the day with a new attitude which eventually makes us to do some new creative or recreational activities. Even the responsibilities and chores become choices, not deterministic acts that we don't have any control over it. Repetitions in daily life, unconsciously gives us the impression of partially losing control and keeps us in almost a single state of mind. Why not changing it deliberately?

So, this afternoon I am sitting in a local Barnes and Noble and have a couple of hours of free time. I take an step back from my life and see my life through a bird's eye. I start to question my daily schedule, responsibilities, and structure. Then I feel as a free person that now, has choices to do something or not, to accept a certain role or change it. This act is empowering, since I won't feel as a victim of the situation or structure. I know that I have choices that can exercise any moment that I like, but I may not decide to do so.

Days of my life, vanish one by one. I start my day with a hope of a couple of hours of peace and quiet, the longing for reading a book, writing, and concentrating for a while. However, the everyday life tasks have taken the toll on me. Since I open my eyes every day, I'm in constant rush and doing and running, and I'm tired all the time. I have almost no time for "being" and thinking and creating. My mind is constantly preoccupied. And time is passing by. The days and months of my life are vanishing one by one into the thin air.
I don't wish to live like this. I do not wish to open my eyes on my 50th birthday and realize that I have rushed through my life for the past couple of decades.
I refuse to accept this way of life. I don't believe in determinism. There should be ways out of these role and responsibilities that we define and create for ourselves ...

Fragility

I am organizing his toys in the other room that I hear the sound of him jumping off our bed into the floor. The continuous painful cry shakes my body and soul. His face has a large bump, he can barely breathe from pain, and I feel desperate. I feel the essence of fragility of life, the depth of my vulnerability to all these circumstances that arises. My little one has not yet recovered from the high fever that has been daunting him for the past several days, and there it is, another pain and miserable moment in his life.
Three hours later, I'm still awake and look at the large blue bump on his forehead. Every now and then, I listen to his breathing. He will recover, I know, but every time I would feel stressed out and desperate like never before. Every time something dangerous happens to him, I feel that I am the most vulnerable person in the world. I have never felt to this extent, how fragile a child's life is. I have never felt so vulnerable in my life.