But Why?

After years of trying to juggle work and family, I finally decided after the birth of my third child to become a stay at home mom.  This was detrimental to the income of our house, and we have had to learn how to live smarter (i.e. on less money!).  But it was a joint decision between my husband and me in an effort to stop an out of control spiral of stress before we reached an age where we looked back and said, "Why?  Why did we let our life pass us by?  Why didn't we do something to change things?"  To make the change, it meant taking time (we didn't have) to stop and examine where we had been and where we were going to be if we stayed on the same path of just trying to get through each day.

The stress was mainly caused by two working parents, who both thought our professional jobs were important, and whose jobs required 24/7 attention and lots of hours of "extra" marketing with participating on boards and committees, in addition to handling the general hardships of running our own business. Oh, and did I mention young kids thrown into the mix?  It was hard to shift gears from being in an adversarial and argumentative nature with our jobs to a nurturing, listening, and loving nature with our family.  We wanted to think we were happy.  But were we?  We were happy to have our family, but unhappy with how we interacted with them and each other.  Now that I'm home and able to focus on keeping the home in order, and focus on the kids, I have become the patient mother I knew I could be if I wasn't always worrying about what I had to get done at work the next day, or what problems of others I had to deal with of as part of my job, or the guilt of not being with my kids during the day, or for being grumpy with my kids and husband, or for bringing fast food home yet again, or for just not doing enough, or being enough.  I realized that I am only human.  And it has been a five year plus struggle to accept that I'm not superwoman, but now that I have, I am free to be me.  I can truly be happy just enjoying my family and being creative on how to live on a budget.

Now that I'm not working, I can't afford to just run to the store and buy a movie to put on for the kids, so instead I pull out a board game and we play it.  Or we go to the library or park, for free.  We spend more quality time together as a result.  And we don't feel the pressure to run through a drive-thru to save time between activities--we cook a meal and sit down together to enjoy.  That's healthier for body and mind.  We are happier.  I know I keep saying it, but I'm so excited about life now.  And you can be too.  It just takes making a commitment to yourself and your family to know what is important in life.  I'm not advocating that the only reason I'm happy is because I'm a stay at home mom.  For me, my job and all the related stress and complications, poured over into my home life to make it unbearable.  Some people need to the opposite--to go to a job to keep their sanity, and that is what goal they have--to get into the workplace to help feel a balance in their life.  No matter your situation, desires, and stressors, you can make small changes that make a big difference.  This blog is just my story, and I'm not saying it's right for everyone, just my family.  That's why I hope to have stories in the future of others who have done something in their life to make a positive difference in how they feel toward life in general.

But enough of why!  You get the idea--especially if you are going through similar feelings about anything even remotely like this in your life right now.  I'll rant more later about the causes of what I like to call the "drains" in life--like the cons of being tied to technology (and how to turn it into a pro instead), or the cons of being in too many activities, whether it be your kids' activities or your own (i.e. how to say "no" AND let go of the guilt you might feel when you say it)--that led up to the changes we made and how we are working to get them under control.  Next blog:  De-cluttering.