Giving Up Because We Can't Keep Up
Today I got up like every work day at 5:15 AM so I could have a little time to write before my son has to get up at 6:20 AM for school. Despite having the encouragement to have all his school clothes ready for this morning the night before we ended up looking for socks and shoes. He needed to wear long pants versus shorts because it’s colder than we thought it would be. He needed extra encouragement to get moving at every step. Long story short, like most houses we were running late now. I did my best to keep my cool while ushering him from the bathroom to brush his teeth and kitchen for a quick breakfast before he’s out the door for the school bus. Inside I was steaming mad and felt the rush of stress and hurry-up come over me.
Yes here I was, the writer of keeping things flowing natural and not letting modern day stress interfere with your life, feeling just like any other mom on a Monday through Friday morning. As far as getting a sketch of a blog post done, didn’t happen. Having a cup of coffee before it got cold nope that didn’t happen either. My stomach was in knots over the rush of the preparation for the day and I was so distracted from it so nothing I would have wrote would have come out easy. I totally understand why a lot of people think I’m crazy for trying to mom, work full time and run a business. Sometimes I think they are right.
As I was preparing myself to get to work after all this I sat with the guilt feelings we moms get for being stern with our children, frustrated at the situation and the building up of stress I was about to face in my work day. I knew in the houses down the street my friends were feeling the same right now as they prepared to get to work or were at the bus stop standing in the chilly morning. We push aside those feelings and get about our day dealing with jobs though because that’s what we do. It doesn’t feel good or right or fulfilling but we do it anyway. It was in that moment I realized how much we just give up because we can’t keep up or fight against it.
I do it. I give up time for sleeping, working out, eating well, taking care of myself for the sake of work or a load of laundry that’s needed for clean socks in the morning. I forego my needs to get a quick break or lunch away from my desk to get work in my job done or respond to the latest “emergency” that’s come up. I rush from my job to the kitchen to prepare dinner, throw in another load of wash, empty the dishwasher and help with homework. Sometimes the only thing natural about my life seems to be the harsh routine I have to follow to keep it all going. I give up my own needs because there doesn’t seem to be time or energy to deal with those too on top of everything else!
Wow that is hard to say out loud.
It’s hard to admit how much I still feel like a failure in the mom department, wife area, employee and business owner hats. Oh how much I don’t think I do well or enough of for all these areas while still not even including myself in that list! When I talk about alignment this is where I believe most of us really struggle. This is so much bigger than time management, meal prepping and having a well-organized house with socks easy to find! This is the crux, root cause and bottom of it all! It is the result of living in a modern society that doesn’t give a damn about our personal needs. That is just something you deal with in your own time. However they will report how unhealthy, obese, disease rampant we are to make us feel bad about it all.