Thoughts on being an Army wife and working mom...

Saturday, February 12, 2011

The age old motherly quest - finding balance


The house is quiet on this Saturday morning. Steve has gone to pick up the kids from a sleepover at the Boys and Girls club, and then take them to Seth's basketball game. But the silence will soon be broken. So, I'm going to take advantage of the few quiet moments I have left to reflect on the last couple months. Yes, it's been two months since I've posted! This is what I was afraid of...that as much as I want to keep up a current blog of what's going on with our family, ultimately the family life will make it impossible to keep up! Quite the conundrum.

I often look at other mothers I know and wonder how they do it. How do they raise a family, nurture a relationship with their spouse, have a career, and keep their sanity and identity in tact?! It seems to me that many mothers are able to make this balancing act work - but who knows what's really going on benea
th that unperturbed family surface. The quiet of my morning has allowed me to reflect on what's preventing me from having that balance. Let's see, a full time job teaching in which I have at least five different duties (teaching English, Spanish, elementary Spanish, ELL and coaching knowledge bowl), a masters degree in progress that seems to be stretching out indefinitely (I might be done with it by April of next year), a full speed ahead family complete with two active kids who have busy schedules of gymnastics, basketball, cub scouts, sleep overs, play dates, homework and sibling battles, a husband who is busy with his own career and often gets home late. (As I write, the family has just arrived home and the silence is broken. Hopefully this blog entry gets finished!!). (update - it is now two and a half hours later since I wrote that last line). Besides all of that, there are things that I would like to do for myself; reading, scrapbooking, exercising, writing, cross stitching and traveling just to name a few!!

After thoughtful reflection, I think I've recognized where the imbalances are. The facet of my life that seems to be getting the most attention right now is work. Granted, I'm there 9 hours a day, five days a week. But the work consumes me; I bring it home with me, I work on it in front of the tv in the evening, early in the morning before everyone is up, on the weekends (usually most of Sunday), and yet it never gets DONE! There is always more to do to make my teaching better, and if I don't feel good about my day at work and the teaching I've done, I feel pretty miserable. In solid last place is taking care of myself, and a close runner up right now is working on my masters. This is something else that makes me feel miserable, but I just can't find the time (or motivation) to do it. Squished firmly in the middle between these two ends is the attention I give my family and husband. So it seems that my priorities are all topsy-turvy.

In a perfect world, I should put myself as top priority with my family and husband right behind that (a happy mommy is a healthy mommy!). Next should be work and my masters in fairly equal measure. But how does this really WORK? Is it even possible to put less emphasis on my work and more on myself? Is anyone out there making this happen??? Or maybe I should ask, is any teacher
out there making this happen? Certainly I believe that some career paths require less outside attention - teaching is not one of those. Or is it just that I have such high standards for my work that it wouldn't matter what career I was in, I would always expect the most of my work to the detriment of everyone and everything else in my life?

Those who know me, know that I am a list maker; although I've tried very hard the last several years to move away from this habit as it usually stresses me out even more to see what is NOT getting crossed off the list. This tendency to categorize everything in order to understand and conquer it has given me the recent idea that maybe it would help if I mapped out a week to see just how I am spending my time. Then I could strategically plan how to use my time to my benefit once I see where the imbalances and inefficiencies are. Sick, huh? It's like having a computer plan my week for me without the realization that life cannot be boxed or predicted. I've done this in the past with monthly meal schedules thinking it would save me time and money. Funny how quickly the menu went out the window because I got home too late to cook, something last minute came up, or waffles just sounded better! This is my idea of efficiency - spending an inordinate amount of time reflecting and mapping out my life to the eventual realization that I could have spent that time taking a nap instead. So what to do?

I'm opposed to the idea of new year's resolutions because I have never been able to follow through with one longer than a few weeks. But I feel like maybe I need to resolve myself to something. Upon reading my friend's post, I found out that last week was the beginning of the Chinese New Year and "The Chinese New Year tradition is a great way to reconcile; forgetting all grudges and sincerely wishing peace and happiness for everyone." Apparently part of the tradition involves cleaning the house to sweep away bad luck. I like that idea! One of my favorite tv shows is "Clean House" with Niecy Nash. All I have to do is WATCH that show and I feel like my life has been transformed along with the family in the show! There is something cathartic and symbolic about cleaning and organizing your house to that degree. So how do I clean house for myself? How can I sweep away the cobwebs and bad thoughts in my head that keep me from enjoying the blessings that I've been bestowed with? Obviously I don't have the time (nor do I think it's necessary) to go on a cleaning spree of my house in a bid to have a cathartic experience. But maybe something symbolic of my desire to make a clean sweep would suffice? And maybe a resolution in conjunction with the Chinese New Year would be more lucky than jumping on the band wagon of the traditional new year resolution hype? If anyone out there has some wisdom on how a mother can find balance in her life, please share! This mother is tired of the balancing "act" and is looking for some balancing reality! By the way, the pictures are from Steve's annual training conference back in December that I said I would post a long time ago. It sure is fun to play dress up once a year!!