Mom of All Trades: The Reality of It All

Epic. The word resounds in my head. I want to have an epic year. DO things. So I go go go... then I have days that I feel like my life is totally bipolar...

Last week was great. I hit all my workouts and stuck to my schedule. I got all my me things done. Going to work really wears me out. When I went into Emergency Medicine, I was your stereotypical ER doc. Adrenaline junkie. Work hard. Play hard. When I'm at work, I am ON all the time. You have to be or you won't make it. What I like about my job is that I clock in, work, then clock OUT and I'm DONE. Nothing to bring home. No "homework." I can do whatever I want. Play hard.

Working three days in a row just sucks the life out of me though. Perhaps I'm just getting too old for this. Anyway, I spent almost all day yesterday sleeping.

Background on this weekend... I worked Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Hubs is out of town. Inlaws are doing the snowbird thing in Florida. We sent the kids to spend the weekend with their grandparents in Florida since we thought they would be out of school yesterday for Martin Luther King Day. My plans were to come home to a nice quiet house and get some housework done. The reality was that I was too tired every night and all I did was flop in bed and catch up on things on the internet.

So, Monday morning... plan is to get up at 4:30 am for kettlebell class and get a 7 mile run in before picking the kids up at the airport at noon, then maybe go to hot yoga at 7pm - it is my day off after all! Alarm goes off. I simply cannot get out of bed. I reset it for 9:30 am and go back to bed. I finally got up in time to go to the airport.

Got the kids and fell off the grocery budget wagon too... well, kind of... I think I'm still under $500 for the month. They wanted Panda Express for lunch. Went to Panda... came home. I fell asleep on the couch. It was one of those wonderful delicious naps where you just melt into the couch into a deep dreamless sleep. Ahhh.... Then I woke up at 4 pm. Ugh... still have to get my run in. Went to the fitness center and got my 7 in. Came home and the kids wanted to go out again. I didn't have the energy to cook so we hit Luca's Pizza for dinner, then Ella's Frozen Yogurt for dessert. Then, I let them stay up til 11 pm watching bad reality TV. Yes, I'm a pushover...

Which leads me to this... my reality. I want epic things for myself. But some days you have to stop trying to be so epic all the time and live your life... take a nap, go to three fast food joints in 6 hours and enjoy it!

I think the Big Guy was looking out for me when I let the kids stay up last night. They got a snow day today. I was suppose to go to hot yoga at 10:30 am. Then, I decided, I'd rather stay home. Life's too short to do things you don't enjoy. I don't enjoy hot yoga. I desperately wanted to like it - to be like one of those strong relaxed models in the Athleta catalog - but I can't. It stresses me out. It's not in a convenient location. It's only offered 3 times a week and none of those times are super convenient for me either. Maybe I will try yoga again somewhere else but this class is just not working out for me. So... I've made a conscious decision to not go anymore. I like my kettlebell class. Even though it's at a God-awful time, I enjoy going. Now that I'm rested, I'm ready to go again tomorrow!

So where is all this rambling taking me... I keep thinking back to something that Beck Weathers said. Beck was the climber on Rob Hall's fateful 1996 Everest expedition that was literally left for dead on the mountain before getting himself back to the high camp where he then got airlifted off the mountain. I went to a Wilderness Medicine conference several years ago specifically to meet him because he was one of the featured speakers. He talked about how he had spent most of his life chasing things... chasing accomplishments, chasing summits, etc. thinking they would fill his life and give him happiness. After his near-death experience on Everest though, he discovered that all the people and things he really cared about were right at home. He just had to stop and hold still long enough to realize this.

Sometimes I feel (OK, I know) I need to stop and hold still. Have fun with my family. Figure out what really makes me happy vs. all the things I think will make me happy. This week, I'm concentrating on home. I have more stuff to get rid of...