Hey everyone! It’s Mompreneur Monday and I’m feeling stretched and frazzled and a little unravelled. Olivia has come down with a cough, which kept me up most of the night (more out of worry than anything else. But then also hearing a jarring cough over the monitor right in the moment I’m about to fall asleep… it’s like being electrocuted.) And Monday is the day I volunteer at her preschool in the mornings. I always come home tired from that, but today I came home and wanted to take a mini coma.
But ugh, my inbox is really full! Mostly with great emails that really need to be read and responded to! Customers to thank, inquiries to address, an SSL certificate to install (oh yeah, when you have your own website and no budget to hire a web person you get to learn how to BE a web person!) They’re all important and positive. But no matter how many awesome emails are in an inbox, the fullness can still be overwhelming.
And the house is looking a little disaster-ish. I swear we just cleaned yesterday, but there are four thousand open jars of paint on the table from a project Olivia started, blankets strewn about the couches from MacKenzie’s sleepover, and countless pairs of shoes that have yet to learn to walk themselves to the appropriate room.
And so I really wanted to just not write a Mompreneur Monday post today! But no. I’ve committed to this and I’m sticking it out, no matter how imperfect this post is, it’s happening. (And I apologize that I haven’t really posted much in addition to Mompreneur Mondays. Life’s a little crazy right now. Let’s aim for 2 posts a week in February!)
So here are my thoughts. My guess is that you, too, are a little overwhelmed right now. Maybe not this minute (or maybe this minute!) but sometime this week you’re going to be overwhelmed. Your house will be a mess and there will be emails to answer and a sick kid needing you. And you won’t know where to start. So I’ll tell you what I’m going to do, and you can try it too.
I’m going to set a timer for 10 minutes. Maybe even 15. I’m going to make myself a cup of coffee. I’m going to put my phone in a different room. And I’m going to read. Or close my eyes. Or write in my journal. Or draw. I’m just going to take a Mommy Time Out and regroup. I need it. I think that when I get to the point where I just feel like I don’t have 10 minutes to spare–that’s when I need 10 minutes the most.
Then I’m going to set my timer for 10 minutes again plan out the next 2 hours. What HAS to get done? What can wait until tomorrow? What will energize me and what will drain me? Who needs me most right now and who is old enough to put their own damn shoes away? And then I’m just going to do things one by one. Realistically, I’ll probably only get like two things done. And that’s ok. That’s two more than if I just sit here staring at my inbox.
We all get overwhelmed. I’ve read a lot about “avoiding” overwhelm and I think that it might just be impossible. I have learned how to plan things better and do things ahead of time and set better boundaries to feel less overwhelmed on a day to day basis, but some days are still overwhelming. So maybe avoiding overwhelm isn’t the answer. Maybe the answer is stopping and saying “Okay, I’m overwhelmed right now, what do I need? What can I give myself for 10 minutes to help with this?” And maybe the answer is chocolate. Yes, I’m almost positive the answer is chocolate.
Get Fresh 