The following is a guest post from momAgendaCOMM blogger Jill Krause.
Once upon a time, there was a busy professional gal. She planned events, she networked, she attended business meetings…and she was organized. She carried her leather bound planner in her pretty purse that matched her pointy-toed high heels. Inside, the pages were colored in yellow and pink highlighter, peppered with Post-Its, and dotted with checkmarks next to finished tasks.
One day, that gal had a baby. She gave up her office job for one that had no set hours, just every waking moment of the day. She tossed her planner aside, and put the highlighters on a shelf, out of reach of curious and small, chubby hands. She suddenly found herself missing about 4 hours out of every day, sucked up by the small tornado she gave birth to.
When that gal had her 2nd baby, she found herself stuck inside a wormhole that sent her flailing through time, appointments and deadlines flying past. She was OUT OF CONTROL, losing her mind, and struggling to figure out how 2 kids manage to make time fly 6x faster than it used to. (Really, can ANYONE figure out that equation?)
That gal is I, and I’m making it my goal this year to take this chaos and tame it the best way I can. I want to find my way back to the golden days of organization. I never knew two tiny people would require so much coordination!
When I list it out, it doesn’t sound like much – doctor’s appointments, play groups, pre-school, music class. But, add to that all the other balls I juggle – like my two blogs, freelance work, maintaining the house and feeding four people, plus all the home renovations we’re drowning in, and I’m faced with a workload 10x as big as any 9-5 ever demanded.
My goals for this year include getting into the habit of writing everything down every to-do, every to-buy and every great-idea. I can’t trust my brain to keep these things safe and easily accessible anymore. I can barely trust my brain to get me dressed and out the door most days.
I’m starting by taking back my Sunday nights. I’m going to sit down with my momAgenda and schedule out my week – write down my thoughts, plan my menu. And then?
I’m going to give myself permission to mess that all up, to move tasks to the next day, to change that 15 ingredient meal to cheese quesadillas, to be okay with not checking everything off by Saturday night.
One big lesson I’ve learned by now is I may be able to organize my thoughts, but I won’t ever have complete control over my life, and the sooner I learn to roll with it, the easier it will be to tame. BRING IT, 2011! Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s Sunday night, and I have a date with my planner.
Jill enjoys blogging on her personal site, Baby Rabies and you can also find her on Twitter and http://www.facebook.com/BabyRabiesBlog.