Confessions
Here is my confession: Last week I was struggling - big time. I sat on the front seat of that struggle bus and rode it all the way home. I struggled to do basic things like take showers and eat. Almost every night I found myself scrolling Facebook mindlessly at 1am. By Friday I was in full-on zombie mode, and by Sunday I was having a meltdown.
It's Monday morning here at my house as I start Back to School Week 2. This morning I stumbled around the kitchen thinking what in the world am I supposed to be doing? I am really not a morning person. Thankfully I finally remembered that Monday = packing Josiah's lunch, dragging Eli out of bed and getting ourselves into carline.
Josiah just started back to going to a brick and mortar school after a year and a half at home with me doing cyber-shcool/homeschool. Hopefully this is going to be a wonderful experience for him but it requires me to do the whole car line thing every day - there's no bus option available at his school. So we're doing car line, something I haven't had to do since Josiah was about two years old. He's in 4th grade now. So to all my other car line mammas - solidarity.
There were some things I did well this week - I got Josiah to school and picked him up on time every day, despite my fear that I would zone-out and end up at the Starbucks drive-thru. Also I got all of Eli's assignments for cyber-school checked off. So this week wasn't a total loss.
If I could be sorted into the Divergent faction system I would be Abnegation. Every time. I grew up in a religious community that valued the forgetting of self and consequently the term "self-care" has always been a bit cringy to me. The problem with this - with not paying attention to self-care - is that it makes it hard for me to communicate with others, or even recognize within myself, when things are starting to go off the rails.
You might call self-care "self-knowledge put into action". This spring when I was chatting with my life coach about this I called it "optimized operation" because just like a piece of machinery has it's conditions in which it operates well and then the conditions in which it will become glitchy - I need to be aware of the conditions in which I start becoming glitchy and turn into a momzilla.
This week: I'm re-organizing myself and re-prioritizing what goes done in a day. It turns out taking a shower most days is more important to me than I realized and (duh) spending too much time on social media messes with my mood. I'm reminding myself that I need to make sure that I do the things that turn me towards optimum performance, which means saying no to the yummy 99cent coffee at car-line because no matter how much I enjoy it in the moment I don't enjoy the 1am jittery sleeplessness that results from said treat. I'm putting priority in spending a little time with girlfriends because a whole week without any adult female face-to-face time is just too long.
How do you practice self-care? Lave a comment below or let me know on my Instagram, Facebook or Twitter pages. Want to talk about what self-care changes you might need to make as you move into a new season? Check out my coaching page.
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