Category: RAMBLINGS

I want my family to thrive.

I was up at 5:00 a.m. this morning with Chloe after being awake with her all night while she cried. This week has been tough. Nothing is seeming to go right. I haven’t had much sleep, I haven’t worked out much. I’m not sure if the week has sucked because I haven’t worked out or if I haven’t worked out because it has sucked. Either way, I am not thriving. Chloe is teething and not sleeping well, I am having a major loss of self-control with food, I can’t catch up on Sienna’s school projects or house cleaning, and it seems like something is going wrong every step of the way.

Thriving is something I think and talk about a lot. I want to create a life in which myself, my husband, and my girls are all best set up to thrive, not just survive. Goggins says surviving is lazy. More specifically he says, “Don’t just survive life. Search your soul for your limits and kick the shit out of them!” This is the life I want to live. This is how I aspire to raise my family.

Routine is something I thrive on, and having a 5-month-old really throws a wrench in that. Also, just two kids with a husband who works an opposite schedule Tues-Fri (and lots of overtime) is not easy. But I take it as a challenge, an opportunity for growth. Some days are harder than others and some days are easier. My goal is to get to a place that our family can thrive in spite of our schedules and/or obstacles. A lot of people say to me “x y z happened” or “my kids did x y z and they are fine.” The difference is “fine” is not the standard we have set for our family. Scott and I both agree on that. We push each other constantly to be better and do better.

We are often quoting people with the no excuses mentality like Jocko Willink, David Goggins, Tim Kennedy, etc., to each other for motivation (even though it’s not about motivation, it’s about momentum, but that’s for a different post). So it’s extra unsettling when I have a crappy week or I hit a roadblock. GOOD (Jocko). Life is and will continue to be full of those. I am grateful that it makes me unsettled.

I told myself I was going to give myself till the end of this week to lock it up and get myself together, but already as I sit here writing this, I feel better. I feel a little recharged, a little relieved. I guess this journaling thing really does work. Time to go get some.

Jocko Willink – “Getting better isn’t a hack or a trick or a one change that you need to make. Getting better is a campaign. It’s a daily, weekly, and hourly fight. Against weakness, temptation, and laziness. It’s a campaign of discipline. A campaign of hard work and dedication. Waking up early, going to bed late, and grinding out every second in between.”

David Goggins – “Everybody comes to a point in their life when they want to quit. But it’s what you do at that moment that determines who you are.”

Tim Kennedy – “Stop looking for an easy way to be a warrior… there isn’t one.”

GRATITUDE: I am grateful for a husband who shares my thriving mentality, daughters who challenge me to be better, and coffee beans.

Stay At Home Mom. A mom who stays home and does not go to work, but boy does she still work. I don’t drive to an office, but man I feel like I work my tail off – make that my brain off. Each job I’ve had in my life, respectively, has demanded a greater skill level and required a higher performance level, and that did not stop when we decided I would begin my “job” as a SAHM.

I would never have guessed that me staying home with my girls would require such brain power, such creativity, self-motivation, self-discipline, such a giant sense of humor, patience, confidence, organization, flexibility, strength, grit, resilience, and gratitude. I could go on, but I digress.

In case you were wondering, I LOVE my work. I was recently asked how I liked staying home and in the moment I paused and replied with, “I don’t not like it.” Later that day I thought about my answer and I shook my head to myself wondering what I was thinking. I LOVE my job. Maybe I felt like I needed to say that because I was in the presence of business women and I was expected to say that? (There’s where that confidence comes in that I mentioned. I’m still working on that.) I am proud to stay home with my babies. I know not every mom is into her kids the way I am, and I love and respect that. We need woman to do whatever the hell sets their soul on fire and makes them happy. In this season of my life, taking care of my girls and my husband are what make me happy and set my soul on fire.

I have been going to summer camp since I was seven years old. Shout out to Dawn for forcing her 7-year-old onto a bus with a bunch of strangers and tears streaming down her face so she could get a week of peace and quiet. It was the best decision she ever made. I have gone back to that camp ever since. I quickly set my sights on becoming a camp counselor. They were so cool. So I did that. During that time on staff, my relationship with camp changed from going for my own personal gain to going for the campers. Then, oh then, I set my sights on becoming a leadership director. So I did that. I am in charge of helping high schoolers reach/exceed their leadership potential and help them transition to staff. Now it’s not the counselors that I think are so cool, it’s my high schoolers.

Camp is one week each year. Seven days out of the 365 in a year. Those seven days bring me such joy and calm and purpose and laughter. It doesn’t hurt that some of my very best friends are there with me to share that joy and purpose in working with those kids. My point of this story is that camp has shaped my views on children, on life, and how involved I want to be in raising my children. Camp is why this job is so important to me and why I feel so deeply about it. I would recommend summer camp 100% of the time. Thanks, Mom.

Anyway, where was I? Part of being a SAHM means not having a ton of adult interaction. Sometimes you can find yourself going a little crazy. Add that to the year 2020 with cop hate culture, politics, covid, politics, and cops being ambushed and killed because of politics, and you get a recipe for disaster, especially for someone like me whose mind NEVER stops running. Queue Ramblin’ Woman. I needed an outlet. Somewhere I could put my rambling thoughts down and hopefully put them to bed. This is my attempt to rest my mind and my soul.

And it’s gonna be A LOT of ramblin’.