This morning I opened my inbox to find client inquiries, letters from teachers requesting volunteers for field trips, cinco de mayo, track and field day, a costume that needs to be made for a child, a friend asking me to watch her kids, webinars that still need to be watched, client orders, and more (you get the idea!)
I feel like I am entering a new realm of life where my kids are not babies anymore, they don’t require my full on attention all day long. I don’t have to deal with nap schedules or late night feedings, I don’t work until the wee hours of the night like I used to and hooray, hooray, this will be my first summer ever not hiring a nanny because my kids are old enough to be home alone. Yet there are bigger more mental issues that we are dealing with. Friends at school, math problems that I don’t even understand, talking until 10pm (yes not more late night feedings, but mental energy extracted from me when I am spent!!) It is an newly found odd stage of life, and I feel like I am learning right along side my kids.
One of the lessons in the midst of it all, and one that I truly feel like I am learning in the year of 2016 is balance (or margin or rest or whatever other buzz word you like to call it). Balance with work. Balance with kids and family. Balance of re-finding myself and what I truly love. Balance of what to say yes to and what to say no to-and realizing that it is OK not to say yes to everything and everyone.
Yesterday I spent the day working outside in my yard with my kids gone at school. A fabulous 75 degree day and my hands in the dirt and doing a bunch of outdoor activities I love doing in the spring. It was glorious. But for the first hour that I was trying to enjoy my time I felt guilty. For not working on my business, or dealing with household chores, or doing things my kids asked of me. I’m sure you too have dealt with these feelings (please tell me I am not the only one!!)
Yet in the middle of it, I realized that if I don’t take these days to myself, if I don’t check off social media, if I don’t put aside all demands of me, I will burn out. Spent and not able to give to anyone, and I don’t want that for myself or for anyone around me.
Needless to say, the world went on, texts and e-mails waited, my in-box did not explode ( it just got fuller!), social media went on without me, and I am much more rested than I have been in weeks. My yard also looks pretty great, my my muscles are a good tired and I got my first of the year sunburn that I am definitely OK with!
Before I went into the “I-NEED-to-capture-you-at-this-very-moment-because-you-are-only-young-once-and-I-will-blink-and-you-will-be-grown” speech, I thought long and hard. Recently I have been reading Hands Free Mama by Rachel Macy Stafford and been SO convicted every time I pick up my phone, camera, or to do list. I am now constantly asking myself the question, why. Why put this on social media? Why am I picking up my phone? Why am I deciding that whatever I am looking at on a screen is more important than the people in front of me? Why do I need to post this or that or comment here or there? (Let me tell you as a side bar, this has been so good for me and so incredibly hard and convicting!)
Not that I don’t value a good session or good photos or see the need to push my kids to do things they don’t really feel like doing, but Saturday was not that day. I finally had a free weekend and a free day with my kids and instead of thinking about how we could enjoy the day together I was thinking how I should portray my life on social media and turing more of my attention on that than on the little people in front of me.
