Planet Auntie

On my 32nd birthday, I am three days into a huge life transition. Having given up my day job to stay home with my kids, I am excited and nervous and full of plans. But really, when am I not full of plans?

The first day I stayed home, I did all of the things. We cleaned for a couple of hours (I gave Felix a duster and he “helped.”) Then we did yoga–I give Felix his own mat and he joins me when he feels like it. I managed to squeeze a shower in there and we ran some errands followed by lunch and a trip to the Chick-Fil-A play place. Then it was home for a nap, miraculously both kids slept at once and I got some photos taken before it was time to push burgers and beer at the new job. And when the night was slow and I got off an hour early, I treated myself to a glass of wine and got some writing done at the bar and got home at my usual time. I was so proud of myself.

Then Rufus woke up constantly all night long, because he was hungry, because he was cold, and I got barely any sleep. Brock worked from home for an hour or so, letting me sleep in. Then I woke up, drank all of the coffee, and decided I was going to take it easier, because the whole not having two jobs meant I wasn’t supposed to have to work myself to exhaustion.

I’ve been puzzling over how I’m going to do everything I want to get done this year. I have a few very broad goals, but each of them come with pretty hefty to-do lists.

1. Be there for my kids and husband
2. Get back into shape after all of the pregnancies.
3. Get First Novel out for submissions, then write Second Novel and Third Novel (both started)
4. Make Tiny Dino SoapWorks successful.

All of these things have various working parts that could each be their own full-time job, and my current schedule is just too new for me to know how it will all work together. My first goal is to find a rhythm that allows me to do some housecleaning, hang out with my kids, write, make some bath and body stuff, work and do everything else–maybe not all in one day, but perhaps some sort of rotating schedule. Most importantly, I need to give myself more than a couple of days to figure it out.

While I find I am pretty much incapable of doing nothing, today and through the weekend, I plan to do my best. I’ll hit a couple of cleaning project, maybe strain and grate some beeswax. (I get my beeswax from a local apiary, and it’s about one step above raw. Not quite ready to go into finished product as is.) I’ll definitely write everyday, because I can’t not, but slowing down and resting up seems like a good way to start a year where I have some pretty big goals to hit.

1. All of the blog people are talking about their new year goals.
2. I don’t usually play by the blogging people rules. I rebel against most of the “blog this way to build an audience” schtick, but I kind of like this.
3. I especially like this one since my day to day life will be drastically altered at the change of the year.
4. Having a plan going in seems like the smart thing to do.
5. I will have to coordinate life with the kiddos, kicking off a couple of businesses, and the evening job.
6. Good news is that I should have more opportunity to tackle that stuff.
7. Bad news is, I haven’t had much time to think about it yet.
8. But Christmas is over. I have two days left at the day job. I am giving myself next week to rest. To adjust the kiddos to the new schedule before I settle on my plan of attack. (Any advice from work at home mom would be greatly appreciated.)
9. I turn 32 next Thursday.
10. I’ve always liked having my birthday at the beginning of the year, because my need to grow introspective about myself when I turn another year older fits in with the seasonal zeitgeist.
11. I also tend to have too many goals for one person to reasonably accomplish during any one time frame.
12. That probably means I’m ambitious, but I have yet to be convinced that ambition is a bad thing.
13. How do you get anything done without a desire to do it?
14. I’m spending the next week asking myself what’s most important to me to do this year, and what’s best for my family, and finding where those things overlap and where they don’t.
15. The overlap is still probably too much to get done in one year, but that’s not going to stop me from trying.