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# What once felt like a chore
- URL: https://www.gilespcroft.com/what-once-felt-like-a-chore/
- Published: 2025-07-16T07:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-01-24T20:33:55.000Z
- Description: How the exact same situation can be totally different, from one day to the next 🥺
- Author: Giles P Croft
- Tags: Parenting, Acceptance, Grief, Life change, Quick insight, Real stories, Relationships, MECHANICS

‘Time flies’ and my Chica finishes Year 6 and heads off to ‘big school’ in September.

She’ll be making her own way in, which means my twice-weekly walks to junior school with her will cease; something we’re both acutely aware of.

A grieving process has already begun – it’s out in the open.

> *“I’ll miss walking in with you, Dad,”* she says, holding my hand.

I concur, a bit of a lump in my throat.

No use denying the human experience here: it’s sad.

We’re sad.

We feel it: the love that sits beneath all sadness.

🥺

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/9b/f3/9bf3d316-7d32-494b-814f-a7d94d6358c3/content/images/2026/01/2025-07-16-What-used-to-be-a-chore-1.jpg)

…with only two more to go 😭😭😭😭

These walks feel like a precious, ever-dwindling resource I’m clinging on to, like the last few sips of water on a hot day.

And yet this exact same thing, in the past, has seemed like a chore. Something I had to get through to the other side of, in order to carry on with my life.

And so there’s something there, isn’t there?

- A reminder that it’s not the situation we’re experiencing, but the thought-generated image *of* the situation. And that [changes all the time](https://www.gilespcroft.com/circumstances-moods-chickens-and-eggs/).
- A reminder that we don’t ‘use’ this understanding to go into denial. Just because [it’s an illusion](https://www.gilespcroft.com/illusion/), doesn’t mean we don’t throw ourselves into it whole-heartedly. (Quite the opposite – we know we’re safe to do so! Feel *all* the feels, fully!)
- And a reminder that there’s some truth to the saying, *“Live every day as though it were your last.”*

Because now I *know* that soon there won’t be any more of these walks, I kind of wish I’d *pretended*, back when it felt like a chore.

💝

Giles