Ladies, can I be real with you?
I’m exhausted. Just plain tired beyond words. Between my increased responsibilities at work, my desire to be a good mommy and wife, our upcoming move, and my freelance writing gigs, I am burned out.
I am up and moving from about 6 a.m. until midnight every day. From 8 a.m. until 4 p.m. I’m at work. Writing articles, editing newsletters, managing my company’s social media efforts. (Yeah, I’m a big deal in real life, too.)
Then, after an hour and some change commute home, I’m in full chef mode, scrambling to make dinner before my hubby and the kids get home. Either way, I need to have dinner on the table by 6 p.m. if I expect my daughter to eat it.
Then after dinner it’s the whole bedtime ritual of changing diapers, baths/applying their special creams to curtail any more bouts of excema, brushing teeth and reading story upon story upon story.
Then it’s after 8 p.m. and I sneak in a little time with the hubby while he watches SportsCenter then I get to work. I write posts for the blog(s), upcoming freelance articles and then a couple chapters of my book here and there. (What, I didn’t tell you? Stay tuned. 
Around 11 p.m. I shut off the computer and head to bed with a few magazines to get my brain flowing with enough ideas to carry me through the next day.
I close my eyes and get up and do it all over again the next day.
I don’t type all this to have you feel any sort of sympathy. I’m sure your schedules are just as hectic, if not more. But my question is: why do we do this to ourselves? Why do I feel the need to be this supermom who can do it all?
A mom who can cook a healthy, home cooked meal every night, spend the appropriate amount of time with the hubby to keep the marriage strong, who can read enough books to my children so they know how much I love them and I want them to value reading?
I need to relax my standards a bit, even though I feel there’s nothing left to give. Taking more “me time” isn’t really the answer, because whenever I get a free moment to myself, I write. That’s what I like to do. But that’s also part of the reason why I’m so exhausted.
I guess I should focus on the fact that I’m exhausted, not unhappy. I’m exhausted because my life is full of meaning and full of people who love me as much as I love them.
I guess I can live with that.
That was a great conclusion =). You don’t have to kill yourself in the quest to do it all, but if your life leaves you happy at the end of each day perhaps you can view your exhaustion as proof of a job well done.
I’m exhausted just reading that! Take some vitamins, girl! I’m glad you are happy because I often feel burned out by doing all of those same things. The key is realizing which of my tasks are the most important/can be compromised and I am in the process of finding that balance.