Less Do, More Be

Whew! It has been 3 months since I posted a blog! I want you to know it is not because I have not wanted to write one, I simply have not had T.I.M.E. March to June are always the busiest months for us as a family, but this year it seemed so much busier. Now do not get me wrong, I love busy… I really do… but I think I found my upper limit for busy-ness this year and I am happy to be climbing off of the crazy coaster I have called life over the last few months. I think workload reached its max, I think travel sport load reached its max, world weight reached its max, and we as family learned a lot from it. 

What is there to take away from being your busiest and realizing that you need to take more control? Well, my first steps were to evaluate the feelings I was feeling during the craziest parts of it and realizing a few things.  At the peak of it all, I, for the first time ever, thought seriously about throwing in the towel.  I wanted to move to a different state, I dreamt of a simpler life, I dreamt of simpler tasks, I yearned for time to just mindlessly clean my own home, I wanted to just be… and do nothing.  

I thought at one point.. “Man, am I slipping? Have I lost my superwoman powers? Why am I feeling this way?”. I LOVE busy. Well, what it boils down to, is after the year we had in 2020, and never getting to truly come down from that, and honestly for many of the cruddy parts of that year to continue with bogus guidelines… I was burnt out.  I felt deflated like a popped balloon. Have you ever felt this way? I’m sure every mother or father reading this blog has felt this way.

I also know many people compliment me often by saying ‘I don’t know how you do it all,” “You and your schedule are so crazy… I don’t know how you keep it all straight”.  I have never realized how much of a compliment it was until I felt the way I felt mid-March of this year when I felt the weight of my own life and routine for the first time…. ever! So I wanted to take a moment to be vulnerable and talk about it. I think God allowed me to feel this way because it was time for me to reevaluate some things, and I want to share that with you.

Mid-March I had a large wake-up call that made me realize that if I do not slow down… quite frankly I will have raced my life away. I was constantly racing the clock to here, to there, to everywhere. This is fine from time to time- because I do thrive on chaos…. and sometimes you just have to bust your butt to get anywhere in life.  This should not continue on like it did for me for as long as it did. So with a rush or surge of energy and productivity when racing time comes an adrenaline spike…. And following an adrenaline rush comes a crash.  

Imagine being on a year and a half long adrenaline rush and how crazy the crash felt. I feel like I had adrenal fatigue or a sudden withdrawal of my superpowers that normally flow through my veins…..I felt it physically— my whole body hurt, my neck was so sore from stress knots I could barely move my neck, I was getting migraine-like headaches, and I needed sleep like (well like a normal person), but coming from a person that normally sleeps midnight to 5 AM every night… suddenly needing so much sleep was quite the drag and ruining my productivity! The sleepiness is what truly worried my husband.  “Are you going to be okay?” he said… “I’m worried about how much you suddenly need to sleep”.  I knew this was all part of a process and I needed to listen to my body. It seriously took about 3 weeks to feel “normal” again, but I knew what this was all from— it was from the life I created and (typically) loved so much. 

Now, as a mom of four— I want to do it all.  I also enjoy work and have a very large workload.  It can be a hard balance — that work- mom life balance.. but I have always felt I did a great job of it! As a wife, I want to be the one to clean our home, to cook, to take care of the animals…. But as our children age and they now have their own schedules with travel sports and school— this balance all seems harder. There is a lot of give and take— taking my work with me and doing it at their practices or in the car while waiting for them, or doing my work late at night when everyone is fast asleep. Now, I’m not going to underestimate the effects that COVID and the guidelines that come with it has had on me over the last year and a half. I’m so sick of it all I could scream. So it has secretly been draining my energy and led to this crash, I’m 100% sure of that. 

So what am I getting at by sharing this? Well I wanted to share my epiphany that should be likely clear before even stating it…. But the question comes out as….

What is this rat race even all about?

For many, they think of the rat race as all financial… Work to make money, use the money to pay debts for material things, to then have no money, which leads you to the more work part, which creates a cycle.  Well to me the rat race is even more than that… it’s the hustle bustle that society pushes on all of us whether you realize it or not.  You’re ON all of the time— through work, kids’ activities, home care/maintenance, and social media.

HOWEVER, those are all choices.  We have a choice to evolve or remain.  If we choose to remain unchanged, we will be presented with the same challenges and the same insane routine until we learn from them.  So for my family, I have chosen to evolve.  I started with the simplest of tasks…by sitting on my porch every morning, completely undisturbed by work without guilt. To just be.  

Are we making a great life for ourselves and for our children? Yes… but not if it’s so busy that we cannot enjoy it.  That means I have decided to start saying no to things that I typically would say yes to.  “Will you do this for me?” No, not right now. “Can you take on this?” Not at the moment. “Will you join this board for us?” Unfortunately, as much as every cell in my body wants to I have to say no. “Let’s start this business— let’s just launch”. YES, I want to so bad, but I can’t right now.  

I have picked TIME for my kids, for my husband, for our family, and honestly for me over all other things right now.  It has meant saying no to plans with other families from time to time. It felt selfish and wrong at first but has been the best thing for us. For our family, we decided to travel more.  To be together intentionally… not the kind of togetherness at home when we are all doing our own thing.. but traveling and truly being together making memories. I had to make a solid boundary that should not be crossed between home life and work.  Is it after work hours? I’m likely not going to respond unless I am in my home office and have sat down to intentionally work— not just because someone thinks that their needs were more important than my family’s needs.  This has also meant that we chose to sell a business in early 2021, and sold a part of another business.  When I say that we chose to evolve… I mean it. 

We get this one life.  We want to be and do and see all that we can. However, we can’t do anything about the length of our lives.  That is a hard reality to swallow. Generations before mine have been taught to work constantly for a 30 solid years and to live and travel finally once you retire.  What if you don’t make it to retirement? That is the reality of many— not by their choice.  One thing we do have control over- is the width and depth of our lives.  Don’t take that control lightly.  Do not live the same life every day for 90 years, racing time, and call it a life. When creating width and depth in our lives— it feels that we should be doing as much as we can, but all of that doing means nothing if you can’t simply BE.  So for me and my family— I’m taking this Summer to stop sprinting, and start walking……

Less Do… More Be