Reset, Recharge & Regroup - Day 5 March Writing Challenge

Do what you gotta do to get through the day, amirite??!!

 This is more of a housecleaning post, if you will. Since most of my readers are moms, I'm willing to bet that the weekends are just as busy as every other day, if not more for some houses and since we're moms we don't really get the weekends off like we did in the past. But that doesn't mean we can't shift our thinking and start looking at the weekends differently. For me, my husband is home on the weekends too and he is incredibly helpful with the kids and taking over. 

This wasn't automatic by the way. 

This took communication on my part of telling him what I needed as far as me needing to recharge my batteries and my energy in order to come back refreshed. This didn't happen overnight and it wasn't completely easy for me to communicate either. (It also didn't happen when we had tiny babies either.) It came with lots of guilt on my part because why should a wife and a mom need a complete break from the family? Doesn't that mean you don't love them? And no, it just means that I'm an introvert and the way I build my energy back up is by being alone in quiet and peace for a bit. Which is damn near impossible when you are a stay at home mom to small children. I learned about being an introvert very late in life, just a few years ago actually and I plan on writing about that more later in another post.

So because my husband is supportive of my writing and always has been, (when we met I was still doing the 24 Hour Plays that I wrote about in my "30 Things" post and he saw my very last one) I am planning to see what I can do during the weekends on both days to take an uninterrupted hour (or two???) where I'm not having to sacrifice my sleep or personal daily hygiene to get it, as well as completely setting up the entire family with food and entertainment before I retreat (because that is not getting a break!!) to just be by myself and quietly write. 

For the record, my husband has been saying for years now, "Go and write and take all the time you need and I'll take care of everything with the kids." And he means it and he does all of it but sometimes I get in my own way and I don't do it. Depression can be a bitch. When we had a baby/toddler who was still breastfeeding I wouldn't be able to just go for hours and hours, but we still tried to make a writing break happen as much as we could. 

It makes it harder now with Covid restrictions because I can't just go sit at a coffeehouse and write like I always used to. And even though there are tables available in most places to sit outside to drink a coffee, etc., it's still way too cold and windy and damp to do that. So I need to get creative. But I'm determined to make this work over the weekend because the last 5 days of being able to just sit in peace and quiet and write have literally fed my soul in unmeasurable ways. (Did I mention that I have been a "writer" since the 1st grade where I first started writing stories?) I feel this is literally who I am at my core. 

I have this feeling of calmness and contentment that I haven't felt in a long time because, this whole past year dealing with the pandemic and with distance learning and living life in quarantine, I never feel like I get a real break to reset and recharge. And I have realized that even more than taking a bubble bath or a long shower, or watching a movie or bingeing on a favorite series or going out for a solo coffee or lunch and certainly more than sitting and vegging out on my phone for a long time (even uninterrupted time) is being able to write, and actually have a long enough time to write where I can complete my thoughts that are always racing ahead of me - being able to sit in total quiet with a pen and a notebook or banging away at the keys on my laptop for an extended period of time is the most recharge and reset I could ever have for myself. 

So now that I recognize that, and I think it's the first time in my life of really seeing it written out - I need to make that happen and I must make that happen for my own sanity and clarity. 

Normally during the school week if the kids are at school and I have a break I'd take some time away from daily chores to just sit and veg out in front of the TV and I'd be constantly watching the clock, doing the math until pick up and I'd almost start crying every time because I just wasn't ready for that immense surge of energy that comes with everyone crashing together once again after being apart for hours. The kids, the dogs, the messy house, all of the show gear tossed everywhere leaving puddles of wet salty sand all over the mudroom. Papers flying in whirlwinds around my heads of sign this, read this, help me with this. Everyone needing snack after snack like they just got off the graveyard shift and didn't take a lunch break. Stories from three kids all at once about every annoying kid that did everything annoying at school, complaints about homework and the realization setting in that, yes, they need to go back to school the next day. For all of that extra after school stress, I do wish we were still homeschooling because we didn't really have any of that extra wildness and built up negative energy. There was still a big energy push by the ned of the day to go outside again and get a longer break which was harder to do in bad weather. 

By the way, I'm fighting the urge to defend the fact that I do love my kids and that I do love spending time with them as well as my husband who is my best friend and he somehow makes everything bad and negative melt away when I talk to him - because I hope that is a given - that moms can still be madly in love with their families yet still need breaks from them to come back whole again. The older I get the less I feel the need to defend myself because if someone is reading this and judging that they either haven't admitted fully to themselves yet that it's actually healthy and perfectly OK to take breaks from your loved ones, especially when you are overly stressed and overworked and overwhelmed - or they do not have children and can't imagine why someone would choose to have children if they need a break from them. And none of that makes any sense anyway. You are not a bad parent for needing to take a break from your family. Just like you were not a bad child/teenager for wanting to take breaks from your parents and/or siblings. 

In an effort to stop the cycle I put myself on of needing to tie everything up in a cute perfect bow to end my posts I will just say, until next time!

Thank you for reading,

Love,

Colleen

*About the March Writing Challenge: I have decided to try to write a blog post a day for 30 days to get back into the swing of being a writer again, which is one of my true loves in this life, creatively speaking. I'm a mom during a pandemic, so we’ll see how it goes! <insert nervous laughter.> Please leave a comment below and tell me where you are joining me from and how you found my blog; IG, Google, FB, Blog follower, etc. Thanks for joining me!**

*The above photo is actually one I took about 20 minutes before I picked up my kids from school on a freezing Monday afternoon which is always tough especially for my little one who is currently in kindergarten because he just came off a rad weekend of playing outside a bunch and having movie parties and getting to play video games (which are strictly for weekends in our house) and he wants to continue livin' that life on Monday after school. He also asks me every time if it's Friday yet. So this was literally my "gear up" fuel before I got everyone. This is not a daily thing...but maybe it should be? lol!