The Balancing Act.

I am ashamed to say it's been a little over a month since my last post.  Of course, blogger conveniently points that out and keeps tabs on my procrastination.  Although, it hasn't been so much of a procrastination excuse as it is a baby excuse.  I have a wild woman on my hands!  I state this with the most affectionate intentions, however.  She is a breath of fresh air each and every day.  Her arrival has had me stumped to find my balance as far as juggling the day to day functions of life.  For the record, she arrived 10 months ago.  Yes, I've been teetering on the edge for a while now.

As my daughter's first birthday approaches, I have been reflecting on this past year.  A lot has happened, to say the least.  The most important being my daughter's birth.  I received my yoga teacher's certification just prior to that, I quit my job to become a stay at home mom, we moved from South Florida to Maryland, and I got married.  The marriage was as casual as I threw it in at the end, which was a perfect cherry on top of our many blessings.  It's been a year of firsts, a year of changes, a year of adjustments, and a year of becoming a full fledged grown up.  Now that I have all these exciting, momentous treasures in my life, finding balance has become quite the scavenger hunt.

The days of sitting in the sunlight meditating are a fuzzy visual of the past.  Hours upon hours of yoga are a craving, rather than routine.  I remember when my yoga practice had to be performed alone, perhaps at sunrise or late at night, with meditative music playing in the background, incense wafting through the house, lights dimmed.  Candles burning?  Sure, why not.  Fast forward to today.  Present day yoga practice goes more like this; fifteen minutes of sun salutations with a little person climbing on my back during cobra pose, sounds of dogs barking at the neighbors, the smell of dinner simmering in the crockpot (a newfound beloved friend of mine) at 2pm.  Mediation you ask?  That's funny.

Sharing my life with two other people, both depending on me from day to day, has been both the most profound blessing and a navigation of challenges.  Moving out on my own at eighteen has given me the opportunity to become a strong, independent woman.  Included in my independence comes my deeply embedded ways of doing things.  Cue one of the many challenges of life.  I am no longer by myself.  I am living with family again, this time my own.  Balancing my husband and daughter, along with my secondary loves such as yoga, running, cooking, writing, reading, working, creativity, and nature (to name a few), is not always a straight shot to sanity.  Sometimes, it can be an outright maze with a frantic race to the finish, resulting in some bruises from the inevitable running into walls.  Cue my deep appreciation for my mother.  I never received my copy of The Perfect Mother Manual, however.  

So how does she do it?  She meaning the woman at the grocery store zipping down aisles in her matching Nike jogging suit with their hair in a neat ponytail, kids quietly in tow as she checks her groceries off her Papyrus stationary list, undoubtedly going home to whip up a healthy creation of freshly prepared cuisine.  This, after a long day of work or perhaps even more astounding, running a successful business that she built brick by brick.  The truth?  You caught her on a good day.  Perhaps her best.  Motherhood brings everyone to their knees at some point or another.  My hero is the woman in the next aisle over from June Cleaver.  The woman frantically searching the aisles, having to retrace her steps because she was focused on keeping her sticky fingers cart passenger from stealing canned goods and missed the ground cloves that she will only use once but somehow made the cut on her grocery list that was written on the back of last weeks receipt with a sharpie because all of the pens in house vanished in thin air when she went to write it.  My hero is that woman because that woman is the real deal.  That woman is me.

Ok, so how do I do it?  My day to day routine and my day to day thought process is ever changing and evolving.  I admittedly have a ways to go before I would consider myself accomplished in the organization and efficiency department.  I have stopped looking at things as a whole, for one thing.  Looking at 20 things that need to be done all at the same time does nothing but create a road block for me that reads NO OUTLET TURN AROUND.  I have started looking at my day, my home, my life in pieces.  For example, the whole house needs cleaned...NOW.  Instead, I take 5 minutes to straighten up the couch and fold the blanket.  I take another 5 minutes in a pocket of my day to put the dishes away and wipe the kitchen down.  I surprise myself at the end of the day when there is only one or two things left to be done.  I wake up at 5:00am to have coffee and write or work alone.  When my husband is away for business and my angel is sleeping, I read.  I read and I read and I read.  Because I love it and opportunities to do it do not come as often as in the past.  The other area I have changed is my self inflicting torture.

It has taken me four attempts to finish this particular blog post and publish it.  I announced that Bee's Curiosity Shoppe would open on October 1st, 2011.  The actual date was October 4th.  Normally, I would beat myself up over these small details.  I would accredit my tardiness to laziness, disorganization, lack of motivation and determination.  The reality is that none of this is true.  The truth is that I am a mother, and my choice was to put motherhood first.  A decision that gives me great pride.  The reason I started Bee's Curiosity Shoppe was to give myself the opportunity to be my own superior and if a task takes a bit longer to complete, it's no big deal.  The idea is to consider it a hobby and strive to make it a career.  Business aside, however, the bigger picture is allowing myself to relax, to chill out.  No one deemed me perfect and told me to uphold the title.  Is in an unobtainable goal that is the true root of my frustrations, not the change in lifestyle or the mountain of tasks placed before me.  Everything of importance will get done at some time or another.

Lastly, I think the biggest change I have made, a constant work in progress, is learning to be honest with myself.  I have started to admit to myself that, at times, I am tired, frustrated, overwhelmed, or perhaps (gasp!) I am losing my patience.  Being honest is simply an extension of respecting myself and is actually quite liberating.  What a relief...I don't have to be perfect!  Honesty, combined with carving out bits of my day to nourish my mind and body (20 minutes of yoga instead of work while Baby Bee sleeps, for example), has really allowed me to start my days on an even playing field.

To top it all off, all this growth and striving to become a more well rounded person has deepened my appreciation for life and all it's riches.  It has also made me more calm and things bother me less.  I am adding facets to my personality and can quite possibly allow myself to be considered a diamond in the rough.  Balance is coming to me and I will only get better with practice.  My knot is unraveling, I will be a tight rope walker in no time.