I was having a chat with Mr yesterday about a blog I read. For the month of October this blog has been focussing on how to create a sacred morning ritual. I have seen these posts come in, and each day I have thought, “that’s great, I need to sit down and read that, and then I need to plan for that, and then I need to do that”.
And each day another post came in, and suddenly there were 17 posts there for me to read and work through, and I was starting to feel overwhelmed.
And the reality is my morning ritual is more like this:
- be woken from a deep slumber by one child crying, or two children arguing, or one child climbing over me to get to the middle of the bed, or one child racing into our room to go to the toilet (why they can’t use their own I have no idea!)
- then I get in the shower hoping for a moment’s peace, but in reality I am still adjudicating arguments, giving gentle reminders to use a quiet voice and issuing requests to “please stop screaming”
- I then explain (once more) to my children that actually I get to choose what I want to wear today, (though sometimes I can be swayed by their choice of shoes or jewellery).
- We then decamp into the kitchen where setting the table and providing breakfast is always noisy, sometimes fractious, always with reminders of table manners, and please and thank you, with generally one child in tears because “I wanted the blue bowl, I spilled my milk, or she looked at me”.
I could go on but you get the general picture.
So when I told Mr about this blog, and this wonderful idea of a morning ritual his reply was ” You really have to stop reading that blog”.
What?!
How life-changing!
How incredibly simple!
How revolutionary!
And … why ever didn’t I think of that?
So I went immediately and unsubscribed, and suddenly I felt lighter.
Please understand the problem was not the blog. I still think the idea is great. I still think the blog is great.
The problem is me. I was putting myself under pressure to create a morning ritual.
But my reality is not that at all. My reality is that I don’t really get any alone time until the middle of the day, when the girls are in quiet rest. My reality is that even then that time will be interrupted at least 5 times. My reality is maybe I get time at the end of the day when I’m shattered from handling the emotions of three females (yep that includes me). My reality is that sometimes snippets of time occur, and sometimes I get no time at all.
When you read a blog, sometimes someone is saying good things, even great things. But even then, they may be things that are really not useful for you to hear right now.
If that’s the case, unsubscribe. It’s ok.
I bet you don’t miss it, in fact I bet you will feel a heck of lot freer.
I know I do,
Jodie