Bloom Relaunch: Part 1

Oh my gosh.  This feels so good.  I am back!

Over the summer, one of my best friends asked if I missed blogging.  I hesitated with the answer.  I missed the writing.  But, wanted to say “no” because I couldn’t imagine blogging in my life as it was.

Everything was on my To Do list.

Care for the Babies.  Two of them.  Two and under.

Sleep.  Non existent.

Working out.  Didn’t happen.

Care for the home where your laundry machine is running seven days a week.

Cook dinner.  First for your babies.  Then, enjoy your appetizer of their uneaten chicken nuggets and cook for you and your husband.

Oh, that husband.  Can’t forget about him… right?  Maybe we will get a date… next month.

Friends.  Start a new habit with them… canceling.

Garden.  Pull weeds.

Farm.  Keep up with the amazing increased demand. Get that social strategy tight.  Immerse yourself into the world of digital marketing and feel like you have to do all the things!

Work…  This is where it gets fun.

Being a working mom was never what I imagined.  But, then motherhood came and I thought I would at least give it a try.  Turns out, I enjoyed it.  I have always loved work, so this shouldn’t have been so surprising.  But, what was surprising was how great “school” was and has been for our kids.  

So, my thought became, “Okay.  Working mom.  We are doing this thing!”

And, I did it.

I gave it all of my Ennegram 7 enthusiasm.

More projects.  More proposals.  More travel.  More responsibility.  But, still… I felt a little bored.

I expressed this in a review in early summer and hindsight now tells me that I didn’t explain this very well… because all it lead to was more.  More reporting.  More calls.  More work.

I didn’t know what it was yet.  But, at the time it felt like boredom.  What I should have said was “I have this pull to do something else.  I don’t think this is right for me anymore.”

So, even with more on my workload, I was still, what I thought was, “bored.” So, I took a new part time job.  Because that seemed like a good idea.  New challenges?  In a new space?  The opportunity for more money?  All good, right?

Oh, and can’t forget the last thing on my to do list:  Me.  But, I never got to this one anyways so what’s the point of putting it on the list.

Around July 4th, we were all at the lake with Adam’s extended family enjoying lunch.  I was sharing a few things we had going on in the next week and my sister in law looked at me and asked, “Why are you working so hard?”

I didn’t have an answer.

I was working hard and felt like I needed to work harder.  It felt like the things I wanted to be accomplishing weren’t getting done.  But, why?

I sat down to write some goals after that day at the lake.  Trying to find a purpose to all this.  I wrote goals for all of the different components of my life, but really I should have just written one goal that day:

DO EVERYTHING BETTER

So, I tried.

It was early July and I floored it.

But, every day that “bored” feeling would come back and coupled with my sister in law’s “Why?,” I started to see cracks in my “normal.”

I knew what I was doing wasn’t sustainable.

I needed to spend more time with my family.  The texts from Adam asking, “When will you be home?” during the work day in Chicago or on a campus wrecked me.  I knew I was stressing everyone out.

And, even on home office days it was tough.  I couldn’t parent or be a wife after giving everyone else everything I had all day.

I was drinking a lot of wine at night to shut my brain off, wanting to just be okay with the work I had done that day… but, always felt called to do more.

I put on weight, justifying big lunches and lattes with my per-diem.

But, I still couldn’t let go.

Until I knew I had to.

I knew I had to quit my job.  My job where I had been for five years.  My job that I loved.  My job that I believed in.  My job that afforded me a lot of flexility and creativity.

It was no longer serving me and, likewise, I was doing it a disservice too.

I wrestled with how irresponsible it felt to quit a good job.  With the exception of a few nights in college, I had been responsible all my life.  And, now, with more responsibility than ever before, I wanted to be reckless.

But, I wondered: Would it be irresponsible to stay?  I had given it five years.  What if I gave it five more?  Who would I be?

Then, one Monday morning I saw her.  She was frazzled.  Unfulfilled.  And, a little fat.

Knocking me from my thoughts, an email came though with another reporting tool for another task and I called in my notice.