First of all, Happy 4th of July!! I'm hoping to get a patriotic post up today or later this week.
I'm drinking my vanilla-hazelnut Donut Shop coffee and musing over . . . life. It's the 4th of July, Trevor is watching Cars for the billionth time, the girls have not yet emerged from their cave. We're going to make strawberry pie today, and spend time remembering how God established our nation. But right now my thoughts are on "life inventory."
See, I constantly feel off-balance. I feel a pull to do better in areas where I fall short, but they are often in conflict. I can't spend more than 24 hours in a day so I'm not sure how to reconcile these internal pressures.
I need to spend more time with my kids. I need to get my proposal sent in. I need to do more to establish my online presence, and get going on my next writing project. I need to read more books (especially in my genre), and I really need to step up our homeschooling. I need to get
Sigh.
Too often you will see smoke curling away from my frazzled nerves. It's madness that needs to stop. But how? God has even sent me a broken wrist to slow me down, but still the question remains. I feel called to write this book. I do. So what gives? So far, even though I have taken a few weeks off from singing worship at church, I'm still overloaded and find that most often it's my top priority (family) that gets sacrificed. Ugh, I'm an awful mom sometimes! [Reading back over this post, I feel God whispering for me to rest. Why is that so hard to do?]
Here are my priorities, in no particular order after #1:
- Family (First of course, after God.)
- Beauty For Ashes
- COTT
- New writing project
- Critiques (Including helping my pastor with his book)
- Social Media
- Homeschool
- Exercise
- House projects (you kow, like the bedroom closet that's becoming a black hole for anything unlucky enough to enter. I'm pretty sure there's a kid or two in there, if I ever get to cleaning it out. Or maybe a portal to another dimension--where one of every pair of shoes my toddler owns is sitting in a heap.)
Writing it out doesn't look like so much. I'm tempted to put check boxes next to each thing but it doesn't seem to work that way. I have made one decision. This blog is going to expand. I'm giving myself freedom to blog about other things besides writing. This actually saves me energy. If I'm researching homeschool stuff, I can blog about it and not have to come up with a new writing article on top of researching. And hopefully I'll connect with more people that way too, thus helping my social media/online presence. Should I say aloud that I am building an online presence? I dunno, but I just did. We all know it, right? Maybe one day you'll even start seeing posts about exercise on here- ha! That'll be hilARious!
I'll come up with a schedule soon. I'll still blog tons about writing, and all the COTT stuff will still be here too- no worries! I'll also keep doing Story Improvs since those are just so much fun. Things won't be completely foreign.
I'd love to hear what similar struggles or advice you all have. I honestly don't know how so many of you do so much. I know a lot of rockstars! So give me a backstage pass already. =)
