Breaking the Ice, and Getting Reaquainted

Hello Old Friend! Long time no connect! WordPress recently reminded me of our anniversary and like any newlywed who forgets a special day, I felt bad. I started this blog about a year ago and, whereas, it is always on my mind it seems to settle at the bottom in the kaleidoscope of tasks I try to accomplish every day.

So, what has been going on?!

My youngest started Kindergarten in August and I had glorious dreams of fully embracing my inner Artist. However, reality has a way of twerking one in different positions. First off, it’s all about the Benjamins. Since I will have student loans until I’m in my 60’s a steady income is needed. I started back at working part time substitute teaching. I love it and hate it. I love that I can pick my days but hate the role. When you are a full-time teacher you build a rapport with your students and you set rules from the beginning that students adjust to. When you’re the sub it’s a different set of kids and classroom routine each day. I don’t use my teaching license to work full-time because I want to be an Artist and with all my other obligations I honestly don’t think I have time to work outside the home every day. Quick shout out to the Husband, if it weren’t for his hard work and good job I wouldn’t have the option.

lady-tired-overworked-housecleaning-clipart-watermark-mum-clipart-rgmsb7-clipart

So what is my normal day that I have lost time to blog and don’t have time to work a regular job?

Ready?

Hold on, its going to get bumpy….

First off I don’t really have “normal” days. I literally have to look at my day planner every night to know what is going on the next day.

I am: a substitute teacher 3xs a week.

A football Mom 2 games a week.

A cheer Mom 2 times a week.

(This will change to Basketball and Cheer Extreme Mom in a couple weeks.)

A   Pink Zebra Consultant and

A possible Thrive promoter.

Ope, and a negligent blogger.

On top of those titles and their responsibilities I have:

A house that looks like a tornado hit

And 6 children to keep up with

Oh, and Husband is graciously giving me money to haul wood as of late.

There are not enough hours in the day or parts of Jenn to go around.

Under all this though, is a happy woman. My children are happy and healthy. Our drama level has been hovering at, right around 4% which is nearly nothing, HooRah!! My marriage is better than it ever has been. I think it has taken the poor guy the first 10 years to come to grips with my crazy Libra self.

I am not happy with my career though. I guess I should quit saying I’m not an Artist because whether I sell my creations or not I still created. Days come and go then suddenly a whole week has passed where I haven’t even gone out into my Shed. This is a matter of prioritizing, organizing, and energy.

To address the energy issue, I have started the Le-Vel Thrive for women system. I bought a four-part system of: Balance at night to help detox, capsules with lots of water in the morning, followed by a shake that I actually started craving by Day 3, and a patch that keeps me going all day and I look like I’m quitting smoking. Today is Day 4 and it really is delivering what it promised! I am overweight but I’m not a fan of women who look like twigs so I’m fine with being heavy. It looks like I could hold my own in a strong wind. However, I have no energy, cramping legs, and according to my Dr., heart issues. My past behavior has been to watch what I eat, cut sugar, drink more water, and walk everyday. I would stick to it for about 2 days so I needed something that would give me a jump-start. I kept putting off trying Thrive because of the cost of it. However, when I look at how much I spend to see the Dr., on fast snacks at McDonald’s, and over-the-counter supplements its worth it! I wanted to change how I felt without changing my lifestyle.

As far as priority and organizing….I tried 3 tasks a day last week and accomplished some but still didn’t make it to the Shed. Three things a day was a system I had read about for goal setting where I would write 3 tasks I wanted to accomplish for that day.

Example:

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday
Laundry Mow Vacuum pool Kitchen Bathroom
Girls clothes Living Room Car Paperwork Boys room
My room Girls room Refrigerator Dining room Wash Dog

 

The idea was if I got the 3 tasks done when my head hit the pillow I would feel like I accomplished something. It worked in a way, except I was too tired after teaching to really get anything done.

So this week I’m doing the hour at a time idea. Since the kids got on the bus I have changed my activity from housework to business every hour. So far so good, I’ll update you next week because YES! I plan on blogging more. When I went back over my previous blog posts I was reminded how much I like writing and that I’m not half bad!

Thanks for the ClipArt at    Tired Mom Clipart

 

Advertisement

3 thoughts on “Breaking the Ice, and Getting Reaquainted

  1. Love the blog. Keep it up Jennifer 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

  2. Thanks Jenn. I’ve been battling the same things, minus the fact that I don’t have six kids at home. My home consist of two adult daughters, a 6 year old granddaughter, boyfriend/fiancé and my bff cat. We have one car so the option for me to work is not there which in a way is good as it leaves me time for housework, taking acre of my grandkid and cat, and working on my master’s degree, but leaves little time and energy for writing. I appreciate your blog for it’s honesty and guidance. I may implement a little of your strategy of planning things out. I do write things down in a scribbly way on a post it or whatever I can find and check things off as I go. Again, thank you Jenn.

    Liked by 1 person

    • The key is goal setting. Pick 3 things that are tasks that you can actually do in a day. Cleaning out the garage, Organizing the attic and clearing off the desk may not be something that can all be done in a day. Section big jobs. Ones you hate the most make the tasks really small. I hate paperwork so my thing is 5 items. Address 5 items on this desk. Sometimes I even consider it a task to mail a letter. Like the little old lady said who peed in the ocean, “Every little bit helps!”

      Like

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s