I can hardly believe we are at the end of October already.  Where has the time gone?  And now, as the calendar turns to November, we can count on time moving at a dead run from here to the first of the new year.

Every part of my life feels like it is just vibrating with change.  Sam is in his senior year, desperately finishing up the paperwork to earn his Eagle Scout rank and filling out college applications, all while trying to keep his grades up enough to have some hope of scholarships.  It's a lot to juggle, but I feel he is doing a better job at it than ever before. He turns 18 at the end of the week and I can hardly fathom that my baby will be, in the eyes of society, an adult.  And frankly, in many ways he is beginning to think like one!

Warren lost a week of his life to oral surgery and is still not feeling normal yet.  But once he recovers, he will continue to be in constant change.  He is just at a point in his life where there sort of is no status quo.  He is in a part-time job with no future; he will either move to a better job, or start school, or both, but there's no possibility that he will ride on as things are for very long.

Bob has applied for a new job in his same company.  I can't tell yet how big a probability there is that he will actually make a change -- but it feels like it's been a while since he even went so far as to post for another job, so it feels significant to me.  Whether it is this opportunity or another, I feel there is change in his future.

And today at my day job, my "new" boss (of five month's tenure) announced that she is leaving.  So we are back in a state of uncertainty.  And they are about to reconfigure the entire work space, squeezing in something like 6 more work stations in the existing space and moving everyone around.  So there will be a certain level of discomfort for everyone.

In my volunteer life, too, there is change.  With Sam wrapping up his Boy Scout career I have announced that I will serve out this year as Troop Committee Chair then I plan to step down. And at church, things have felt unsettled ever since Father Larussa joined us in the summer of 2009. We are on our second choir director since he started (though it feels like Matthew will be with us for a while) and most of our old traditions and comfort zones have been swept away.  It isn't so bad, really, but it has certainly taken away any illusion that church is a place you go for the comfort of the familiar.

I had an interesting talk with my 87-year-old mother on Sunday.  She told me not to apologize for being busy, even when it makes me miss calling her occasionally, because being busy is a good thing.  "And as you get older," she cautioned, "Make sure you stay busy! That is one of the most important things you can do for yourself."

So that's my insight for the week: busy-ness can be a good thing.  And when it isn't, it's probably because of the choices I have made about which things to be busy with.