Dancing a 180
This morning I woke up with next to no energy. Now, I run myself pretty ragged in general (getting up at 4:30 every morning will do that to you) but this morning it was harder than normal to drag myself out of bed. I made it through the morning routine though, more and less, and even got in a normal length workout at the gym after dropping the older kids off at school.
Once we got home, I got some laundry started and sat down to enter my workout details, update my food diary, and read a couple of blog posts. During that little interval all my positive energy seemed to drain away again and I felt just as exhausted as I had when my alarm went off this morning. Worse, I was starting to feel completely overwhelmed again, my long to-do list of stuff crashing over my mind tidal wave style. I was discouraged after reading the comments on a blog post where many of the commenters are also writers who are trying to make it on the indie market. Now most of these writers were talking about all the things making it difficult for them to finish their books and get them up for sale, and other than a few minor mentions of housework, these people have literally hours every day they can devote to this.
If even people who have hours every day to devote to writing can't manage to get their stuff finished, what hope have I? I have ideas running wild in my head that are just begging to be put down on paper (Sheralie is nagging at me) but no free time. Then I started to think about how behind I am with the housework, how the kids' schoolwork is a chaotic mess (a couple days to make up), how I'm struggling to feed our family stuff they want to eat out of food storage (money is super tight right now), how I just figured out this morning that J's Webelos Den Leader meant for me to work on the Fitness badge with him this month (and September's almost over!), how I'm slacking on K's preschool (he does a lot on his own online but I should be working with him), how I feel like I'm completely missing things left and right with my responsibilities at church, and . . . well, you get the picture.
And I wanted to go hide.
Instead, I figured I'd put on some music and blog about it for a minute. But when the first song came on ("Counting Stars" by One Republic), all of sudden I had a crazy idea. I ditched the computer, grabbed S, and danced around the room with her for the whole song. I was singing along, she was laughing, and my blood was pumping again, and all of a sudden, my energy was back.
I can do this. I can tackle all the stuff on my plate. Maybe I won't be able to do everything perfectly, but it will be good enough.
And a little singing and dancing and laughing along the way helps make it all an adventure!
Once we got home, I got some laundry started and sat down to enter my workout details, update my food diary, and read a couple of blog posts. During that little interval all my positive energy seemed to drain away again and I felt just as exhausted as I had when my alarm went off this morning. Worse, I was starting to feel completely overwhelmed again, my long to-do list of stuff crashing over my mind tidal wave style. I was discouraged after reading the comments on a blog post where many of the commenters are also writers who are trying to make it on the indie market. Now most of these writers were talking about all the things making it difficult for them to finish their books and get them up for sale, and other than a few minor mentions of housework, these people have literally hours every day they can devote to this.
If even people who have hours every day to devote to writing can't manage to get their stuff finished, what hope have I? I have ideas running wild in my head that are just begging to be put down on paper (Sheralie is nagging at me) but no free time. Then I started to think about how behind I am with the housework, how the kids' schoolwork is a chaotic mess (a couple days to make up), how I'm struggling to feed our family stuff they want to eat out of food storage (money is super tight right now), how I just figured out this morning that J's Webelos Den Leader meant for me to work on the Fitness badge with him this month (and September's almost over!), how I'm slacking on K's preschool (he does a lot on his own online but I should be working with him), how I feel like I'm completely missing things left and right with my responsibilities at church, and . . . well, you get the picture.
And I wanted to go hide.
Instead, I figured I'd put on some music and blog about it for a minute. But when the first song came on ("Counting Stars" by One Republic), all of sudden I had a crazy idea. I ditched the computer, grabbed S, and danced around the room with her for the whole song. I was singing along, she was laughing, and my blood was pumping again, and all of a sudden, my energy was back.
I can do this. I can tackle all the stuff on my plate. Maybe I won't be able to do everything perfectly, but it will be good enough.
And a little singing and dancing and laughing along the way helps make it all an adventure!
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