Sunday 31 March 2013

balance???

Work life balance...is it a myth?  I'm beginning to think so.  It is something I never seem to be able to master and always seem to be chasing.

I struggle with being present...enjoying the moment...I am always planning, escaping and dreaming up new things to do.  While this can be a good thing it also makes it really hard to be a present, in the moment, mother and wife.  I am constantly overtired as I stay up too late getting 'me' time and have to get up early for work.  On top of loving spending hours doing crafty stuff I also work a 35 hour week as an Accountant and by the time you add all the driving into the equation, too and from work on the other side of the city and the kids sports practices during the week it would be well over 40 hours.  Being an Accountant is a job that requires brain use all day and some days is very taxing (no pun intended but funny anyway!!)  So when I am home I long for periods of aloneness...now that does not work well when you have three daughters, one a teenager, one nearly and may as well be a teenager and the youngest is one who just never seems to have enough of my attention.  So I try but I just never seem to get the balance right.  Some weeks are good and I feel like I am amazing and a great Mum and loving wife, juggling everything with ease and style then other weeks it is a complete and utter train wreck, toast for dinner most nights of the week, the house is a bomb site, homework is forgotten, a great deal of chocolate is consumed and its just all around a very unattractive state I find myself in. 

I am not writing to moan but just to voice my views on the mysterious balance everyone talks about.  I think the balance may be in learning to love yourself in the train wreck weeks as well as the awesome weeks.  I think it's understanding that up and downs create a balance in itself.  I think that if it was always up it would stop being up and start being boring.  I think sometimes toast for dinner is freeing!  And I will keep reminding myself that hope springs new every morning....

My goals for this year...

#1 - to be present!
#2 - to remember how to play

I will keep you posted on my journey with this.

Take care and till then....