My primary personal goal, which doubles as a professional one, is to maintain a consistent, healthy work-life balance, as part of my slow and simple lifestyle journey. I’m excellent at creating and beginning routines, but not so much at adhering to them when life becomes chaotic – like when you decide to welcome a new, crazy puppy into your family after never having one (that you can remember) and homeschool your children when they’ve been in public school their entire short lives, both within a couple of months of each other!
I want to get to the point where I maintain home and work symbiosis, especially during chaotic times. The biggest obstacle to this goal would be myself, I’d say. As a highly sensitive person who is easily overwhelmed by especially emotional and auditory stimuli, my attitude when life becomes chaotic is to immediately dissociate and hide behind survival mode, instead of being present, until I can’t take it anymore. Though it’s never significantly impacted my employment performance, this is an obstacle that must be eradicated if I want to reduce anxiety, foster contentment and joy, and release more time to focus on the things that matter to me.
The older I become, the more I realize that chaos and messiness are normal, a part of our humanity. Sometimes, you get frustrated that your new schedule doesn’t work out because you’re trying to control every variable to be successful, and you have to go back to the drawing board yet again. Sometimes, your children argue and fight when they’re supposed to be quietly learning to the point you think that, for a brief moment, they just might kill each other this time, and you have to begrudgingly interrupt your workflow to prevent that from happening. Sometimes, your spouse is just as tired as you are because he works just as hard to provide as you do, and he can’t help you with the housework or your wild children and puppy; so, the dishes stay in the sink “to soak,” or the laundry piles up and your children have to wear the same outfit three days in a row, or the puppy urinates on the floor and you have to get one of the children to – very poorly – clean it up because you’re already just trying to make dinner without burning it. Sometimes, you get so overwhelmed with life because you put too much pressure on yourself to manage too many responsibilities, because you just want to be everything to everybody to make them happy and love you because – the good Lord knows it – you didn’t get enough love without having to earn it as a child, that you wear yourself out and succumb to the dreaded survival mode.
I believe that there’s at least one solution, if not multiple solutions, to every problem. Obstacles can be overcome. This obstacle – the way that I typically handle chaotic seasons of life – is no different. If I want to achieve my goal to maintain work-life balance, and my ultimate goal to live a slow and simple life with the focus on loving God and loving others, then it must start with an attitude change. The sooner I fully embrace the reality that sometimes life is just chaotic and messy and that I can’t control every variable with the perfect schedule or routines – in other words, the sooner I accept the things that I can’t change and change the things that I can to efficiently re-balance – the more successful I will be at maintaining a healthy balance as a working, homeschooling mother navigating overwhelming times.
Even when life gets chaotic again – which is a given with three children you’re at home with 24/7, am I right?! – I’ll choose to take a step back to assess instead of immediately shutting down. I’m learning that I need to be emotionally available, not just physically, and I can’t do that if I dissociate when I become overwhelmed and stressed. So, I suppose work-life balance is not having the perfect schedule, but slowing down to fully embrace the anxiety and overwhelm as growth opportunities, knowing that all things work together for good to those who love God (ref. Romans 8:28), and He will give us all the grace that we need, come what may.
Simply Amber Marie 