on being selfish

 

This month I have been taking a self portrait everyday.  Inspired by the challenge put out by the lovely ladies at A Beautiful Mess. I started a little late and am not  quite done yet. I have been feeling somewhat disconnected from everything lately. Work has been very busy and things at home have been even busier. The last couple of years I have been spending a little more time trying to get back to doing more of what I love to do and less of what I don’t love to do. It was kind of hard to find a balance for myself after I had Lu and still worked my crazy schedule. I tended to feel like I had no time for myself because I would come home after working an opening shift and feel like a normal person having dinner at home and playing with Lu then I would have a closing shift the next day and spend the morning cooking dinner for everyone to eat while I was at work and trying to relax. I didn’t get both of those things done most days and more often than not it was the relaxing part that didn’t happen. One thing that I remember from growing up was always eating dinner together, so I have always tried to get up at the same time as Scott and Lu so that we can eat breakfast together everyday. Sometimes I can get up without a problem and other days it a little tougher but it’s still my favorite part of the day. I get to see everyone for at least a little bit before they go to work or school even if I don’t get home until they are asleep. I used to think that my irregular schedule was the worst thing in the world and that it was making things so stressful for us at home and that I was going to miss out on so much of the firsts for our new family. It wasn’t easy at all in the beginning but I came to realize that I was making things harder for myself. I was standing in my own way most of the time. I wasn’t making time for myself which was making things so much worse than it needed to be. Now I think my schedule is almost a benefit. Yes, I work a lot of weekends and nights but I also get time in the morning before a closing shift to do whatever I want to do and still make dinner for everyone. When I work at night on the weekend I still get to spend half the day with everyone. The weeks that I have days off in the middle of the week I can get errands done alone which takes half the time and then we get to spend more time together when I am not working. Things are not perfect and yes I wish that I didn’t have to come home to everyone in the house being asleep some nights and I wish that we could spend every Saturday and Sunday together at the beach or a the park. For right now we seem to have found a balance that is working and getting better everyday.

       At the beginning of this year I sat down to think about what my resolution would be for the year, I had no problem coming up with a huge list of things that I wanted to accomplish for the year, in fact I think my list was more than anyone could really get done in a year and still have any sanity or hair left. That list kind of just sat there for a few days and then I threw it away. I had this huge list of things to do but not something to be resolute about. That list was just a group of things not something that would actually make anything different. I wanted to come up with something that would actually meet the definition of  resolution, so I got out my dictionary and found out what it actually means… Resolution : firmness of purpose; the mental state or quality of being resolved or resolute: She showed her resolution by not attending the meeting. So for this year I decided that my resolution would be to be selfish. Make time for things that are important to me, spend time when I have it with the people I want in my life, don’t worry about everyone else all the time, focus on what is best for my family and me, and most importantly make sure that I am doing things that make me happy because they make me happy not because they will make someone else happy or because I should do them.  So far its been going really well, I am more relaxed, we have been spending a lot more time relaxing together and not feeling like we have no time to spend together and I have gotten even more done so far  this year than I did last year or the year before when I set out the year with a huge list of things to do.

   So I am being selfish this year, but in the end It has really resulted in being more of a family and spending even more time together than we ever did before, with the same schedule. Hope you are having the same kind of year.