I’m baaaaaack. It’s been awhile friends. I had my baby in March, a whopping three weeks early and I’ve been soaking up all the time I can with her. About two weeks ago she started sleeping through the night and I’m finally feeling human again; so I figured what the hell? Why not do a blog post.
Change has been heavy on my mind over the past few weeks. Then today, it was like everything was telling me to make the moves I’ve been scared to make. As I was going through my Sunday Reset I started thinking about what I would write about in this post and it came to me pretty quickly. While I’ve had a great excuse for the last 14 weeks to take a break and not put too much pressure on myself, I started thinking about what my excuses were before I had my daughter. I realized there are things I want to accomplish and do that I’m constantly standing in my own way for so I’m gonna hop right back on my soapbox and get into it.
The Excuses: I’ve wanted to write a book my entire life. I’ve started, restarted, and scrapped hundreds of ideas. Last year I finally told myself I’d do it. I would self-publish my contemporary romance and commit to finishing it. Then I didn’t. I put in all the leg work: planned the series, started the book, twice, and looked into how to copyright and publish a book. Then I didn’t. Then, in January, while I was very pregnant I started thinking about it again, and I restarted it, kind of, again. I was going to publish it this time. I even bet I could finish it before I had my baby. Then I didn’t. You know what was standing in my way? Sure, I had a baby and I’ve been busy for a few months, but what about the year and a half before that? I was standing in my own way. Coming up with every excuse I possibly could. Including my least favorite: there’s not enough time in the day. I can’t stand that excuse, because it’s obviously true, but it’s so easily fixable! (I’ll get into that later.) If I’m not actively taking the steps to work toward something, it isn’t going to happen. I can relate this easily to a real-life scenario. Every time my husband gives my daughter a bath they play with every single one of her bath toys. She has a ton of them, it leaves a disaster in the tub. Every single time, my husband leaves them scattered all over the tub. Do I ever say anything about how this bothers me? No. I mean, I do the typical wife thing and loudly sigh as I clean them up, yet again. But I have never once said anything to him about cleaning them up. How can I expect there to be a change if I’m not doing anything to make it happen? Doing the things we want in life takes the same sense of action. How will you get rich or be a best selling author if you never put in the action steps to make it happen? So, I’m posting this in an attempt to not only motivate you to take the actions you need to work toward any goal that’s lingering in your head; but to also hold myself accountable. It’s time to make the changes that will help me finish my damn book.
The Morning Routine: This is where I come back to the whole ‘there’s not enough time in the day’ excuse. If you don’t feel like you have enough time, make the time. I know some of you will read this and be like, yeah right, when? Well, that’s where the morning routine comes in. I challenge you to wake up one hour earlier than you need to –where my morning people at?!– and do the things that you seemingly don’t have the time for. I’ll tell you what my morning routine is: I wake up at 4:15, give or take 15 minutes and how friendly my finger and snooze button get with each other. I brew my coffee (prepared the night before because getting the coffee ready in the morning is the literal worst), and then I enjoy my first cup of coffee in silence while I read a few chapters in whatever book I’m reading. Sometimes it’s a nonfiction, self-help type book, and sometimes I enter the wonderful world of smut. I’ve got a wide array of tastes, what can I say? Then I read a chapter in the bible. Weird sentence to follow my previous one, but it is what it is. Also, if you’re not religious, I’m not telling you what to do with your life, I’m simply stating what I do with mine. Because of my current state of life, I typically do all of these things while I pump so that when my baby wakes up she can get her morning bottle. After this, I work out. Elle Woods said it best, “Exercise gives you endorphins. Endorphins make you happy!” By now my baby has definitely woke up at least once so at some point in the middle of all of that I feed her. Then I take a shower, get as ready as any SAHM will get and make my to do list for the day. This varies. Sometimes it has 2 things on it and sometimes it has 50. It depends on the day of the week and honestly how motivated I am. When I tell you I’m a happier, better person after completing my morning routine (before my kids wake up), I can’t recommend it enough. It’s the best change I’ve ever made. On top of this, I’ve recently started doing a Sunday Reset. Let’s get into that.
The Sunday Reset: Sunday has always been the start of the week to me not the end. I worked retail for a relatively long time and maybe it’t the fact that our POS system started on Sunday but it’s just always worked for me. I make a huge to do list on Sundays. Some of it is simple like, watch church (live streamed because, children) or work out. Then there’s the ‘to clean’ half of the list which is basically a checklist of every cleaning task that needs to happen. Which is every cleaning task ever because I have a 4 year old hurricane that lives with me. But getting this checklist done starts my week off right. I’m not saying you have to do this, I mean if anything, the fact that I have to complete a giant to do list in order to feel sane probably says a lot more about me than anything else. But I love Sundays. They’re sacred to me. I like to stay home, get tasks done and get ready for the rest of the week ahead of me. If I skip my Sunday Reset, my entire family can tell, I’m basically a monster. I highly suggest finding something you enjoy doing and doing it every Sunday. I’m willing to bet it will have quite a positive affect on your mental.
Back to the Excuses Part: Just don’t make them. I mean, I’m sure I’ll still make excuses sometimes. I’m especially good at excuses if it’s to get me out of doing something that involves me pretending to be extroverted. But something I think everyone can stand to remember is that every time you make an excuse, you’re just getting that much further away from the end result. If you want to lose weight but you make an excuse to not work out every day you’ll never lose that weight. If you want to quit drinking but you’re constantly making excuses as to why you need a beer will you ever quit drinking? Anyway, maybe I’ll be back on here more often, maybe I’ll finally post that lesson plan I was talking about like 6 months ago. But until then, later friends!
The Bad Teacher 