Mom Sets the Mood

Catching Pokemon

It's been two weeks that I've been trying to stay off Facebook.  I haven't been 100% successful - I log on to check something specific and get distracted by something I see there.  I posted a funny Finn story there yesterday because I just had to.  I've liked a few posts...but I've never spent more than 10 minutes there at one time (or really even in a day) in two weeks.

I've been more productive at night, I've been a little less grumpy and I'm not late in the morning (I had no idea how much time I wasted when first waking up every morning).  We'll see how the next two weeks go, but I think I'm going to stick to staying off my phone in the morning, and limiting FB to just short stretches instead of long browsing sessions.

My closet is slow going.  There was the suggestion to hire a professional organizer, which I have considered, but right now I'm going to do it on my own. I did read some articles by professional organizers after that suggestion which has helped me think about where to put things and how to arrange them: putting things you use frequently in places that are easy to get to, and storing things in ways that make it easy to keep them organized. Simple, right?  It would be faster to hire someone, and it would probably give me better results to have professional help, but I don't want to take a huge chunk of time away from the kids to get it done.  So slowly but surely, I'm making progress. Amazingly, after that, the only thing left is the garage, and it's just to darn hot to do that anytime soon.

In the meantime, it's less than a month before Finn starts kindergarten.  We have a few really fun plans for the remainder of the summer, but my number one goal is to start approaching our time together in the evening as time together, and not just a rush to get to bed.  I'm not sure where our evenings went wrong, but I've realized that I try so hard to protect my time with the boys, but then wasted all that effort by turning our evenings into a rushed and unpleasant mess.  Unfortunately, my attempt at an attitude adjustment was met with resistance tonight.  Not because the boys enjoy the rush, but because they've grown accustomed to the rush, they anticipate the power struggles and they're used to grumpiness.

Time to remember that I'm the grown up and it's up to me to set the mood for the family.  If I keep at it, they'll figure it out.



In case you were wondering what my Finn story was:

Today Finnegan informed me that there was no longer a need for a presidential campaign, as he and his friend Cooper have just been elected as the new Presidents of the United States.He even brought home the letter they had written to President Obama, telling him "thanks for all the hard work, but we've got it now."

The Future is No Place to Place Your Better Days

I've written here about how I've struggled with feeling overwhelmed, and how I've struggled to find the joy in every day.  I know a lot of it has to do with the stage of life I'm in right now, with two young children - but they are growing out of the age that is so horribly hard, and yet I'm still trying to find my balance.  I don't want to wake up in 15 years and have two kids getting ready to leave home and wonder why I didn't enjoy their childhood more.

A few months ago I listened to the audio version of Shonda Rhimes' memoir "The Year of Yes" and felt inspired by the renewal and joy she found from her year spent saying Yes to things that scared her.  Then this week I read "Loving My Actual Life" a memoir about the author's 9 month experiment to try to find more joy and meaning in her every day life.  Not as fabulous a read, but still interesting to follow her journey.

Naturally, I'm now thinking about my creating own challenge to help me get myself back on track - to reboot my life.  The thing is, I can't think of changes I'd like to make that fit into neat categories that I can tackle a month at a time.  Likewise, there's no one overarching theme (like saying yes to things that scare me) that I could use to tie it all together.  But there is the constant low level stress and aggravation from the clutter and utter lack of organization in my home - when I think of changes, this is all I can focus on. It's a project I've been working on for months and I've made a dent (including getting my entire downstairs redecorated last month) but there is still so much to do, and I've reached the point where it's going to take a lot more than an hour here and there to get it done.  And I just can't seem to get past the point of writing a list of all I need to do.

I've spent this past week, on my vacation in Florida visiting my parents, thinking about what's been standing in my way of actually putting my plans into action, and it embarrassingly comes down to one thing: Facebook.  I've used it for distraction for years, and since I recently became a member of a physician mommy group on there, it's even worse.  I'm certain I waste hours on it every week, maybe even every day.

Which means that step one in my life reboot is that I'm going to take a break from Facebook for the next month, starting Monday when I'm back to work.  (I will make a small exception for the Facebook group that has been created for the kindergarten families in my neighborhood, but I can set that up with email notifications to limit my time on FB.)

I'm going to use the time I'm off Facebook to devote focused energy at night to home organization and decluttering.  By the end of the month I should have a huge chunk that enormous project done - and I'm hoping once I'm nearing the end of it, I'll have a better idea of what's the next step to help me best enjoy the life I'm living now.

I've decided that I'm very specifically not giving up all social media - not Instagram and not blogs.  Instagram has become my favorite time capsule - I love being able to go back and see my favorite moments from the past few years just by scrolling through my own IG feed, and it only takes up a few minutes of my day to see what everyone I follow is up to. (If you're on IG and I don't follow you, share your user name here so I can add you!)  Plus there's the nice side effect of just feeling good from reading IG, while I've found that lately FB often leaves me angry or annoyed or disgusted with humanity.

I'm not sure if this is going to be a short project or a long term project, but as I mentioned in my last post, it's at least another year before I can cut my hours back at work, and at least two more years of staying in my current job.  I can't wait around for better days, I need to do something different now.