The Stressful Things Of Life

So much has happened in the last few weeks that I don’t really know where to start. I mentioned it before disappearing into a whirlwind of life-changing events, but we’ve just ticked a couple of boxes of Most Stressful Things You Could Face In Life. I knew from experience that moving house was one of them so I looked online and sure enough, this is what I found:

1. Buying or selling a house.

2. A relationship break-up or divorce.

3. Getting laid off.

4. A death in the family.

5. Getting fired.

6. Being in debt.

7. Starting a new job.

8. Becoming a parent for the first time.

9. Planning a wedding.

10. Going broke or bankrupt.

Number 1 and 7 happened to us in a really short space of time: we moved one week and I started a new job – after a break of nearly four years – the next. The week after we moved I also became a student again and started a qualification in business management, in addition to having to find a childminder for the girls and buying a second car.

I must admit that I surprised myself by not getting stressed by the expected things. The packing was  painful and we lived in boxes for 2 months so by the end I was tired of it but, incredibly enough, not stressed. In the midst of that I went for a couple of interviews and got the job, and it was an odd time but not stressful to me.

What did happen however, was that there was only so much space in my head for the multitude of other decisions I needed to make in the space of two weeks, and I simply couldn’t give each issue the amount of engagement and energy they required. So finding a childminder and a car, these two things got to me. I found myself one Wednesday morning chatting to a friend when the realisation that I needed to sort these things out in the next seven days suddenly overwhelmed me so there I was, crying over stuff I didn’t even know I had been stressed about.

Life has been… exhilarating, busy, challenging, and then some!

We moved into our brand new house three weeks ago today, and it’s been momentous and exhausting. I am still in disbelief that it is a real thing that happened and I catch myself at times ‘so we actually live here?‘, as we had no immediate plans to move before mid-December when it all started. As to the move itself, it went very well but I am SO GLAD it is behind us now. I have had enough of living in boxes and I look forward to never doing it again. Unfortunately I can already tell this is going to continue for a while yet, as this past month confirmed that Badgerman and I both have the tendency to keep things, we’re basically beginner-level hoarders. The house is gorgeous, with loads of light and very well finished (one friend came to visit and left suffering from ‘banister envy’ as she put it). To be honest, it’s hard for me to get my head around just what an amazing turn of events this is. I’ve rented my whole life and house prices being what they are in the South East, it looked unlikely that we would be able to afford anything this spacious so I couldn’t be more grateful (even though we do only own a bit of it).

Then there’s the new job, and a completely new routine for the whole family. I was most anxious for the girls rather than for me, hence the meltdown over finding suitable childcare for them at short-notice – how could I think to move them from the only house they ever knew AND disappear into working life the next week? It turns out that the ‘children are resilient’ saying is true of my own; both girls seem to have adapted to their new circumstances with relative ease.

I don’t like being so busy that I don’t have the head-space to write or think about writing, but between adjusting, unpacking and studying (just, WHAT), it is where I am at the moment. I am aware that I am still in ’emergency mode’ and that I need to find a new routine for myself so that I don’t just play catch-up with my life but am able to carve space for relaxing and blogging. I’ll let you know when I figure it out!

 

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Naptime Filler

I like to write.  I find it to be a soothing outlet for the many thoughts that twirl around inside my brain but recently I feel like I’ve been drowning with ‘other stuff’ so that when the day is done, the last thing I want to do is think about anything. There is some guilt attached to my inability to find enough motivation to write.

I don’t like feeling that I am neglecting my blog, which is this little corner of franglified fun that I’m really fond of. Yet I still struggle to sit down and write, because it takes me So Much Time to put my thoughts in order. I have come to the conclusion that I don’t love writing. I like it alright but I certainly don’t love it as much as the thousands of bloggers online who are able to produce one post a day. Sure I have at least one thought a day but is it worth writing about, and do I have enough content for an entire blog post? Mostly I don’t, unless I was going to rename my blog ‘Thought of the Day’ and, you know, post that one important thought I had in between the nappy changing, bathroom cleaning and the staring into space I seem to do so much of. Even a post every other day is too much for my poor brain and in the last couple of months, my aim to write one post a week has gone right out the window.

It’s not that I have no time either. Despite the fact that apparently if you have a child, ‘your time is no longer your own‘ and you ‘no longer have time to put make-up on‘, in my case, once I had recovered from the initial shock – and it did take me about three months before I was able to leave my bed before 10 am at the earliest – I actually do have more ‘me-time’ than when I was in the workplace full-time. Not hours and hours (I do DO stuff) but more than the legal work break time. Or maybe it’s the fact that I can take my breaks in block, in the wonderful daily fixture called Nap Time. It can happen at any time in the day and it lasts between 30 minutes and 2 hours depending on… Well, I haven’t quite put the finger on the variables in Little Girl’s case, she sure likes to keep the mystery alive! Nap time doesn’t always happen either, but at the very least there are numerous times in the day when Little Girl happily plays on her own and I can sit down with a cup of tea and last night’s Great British Bake-Off (no more! what shall I do now?). I am a bit mystified by the mums who have just the one child and have no time to do anything at all for themselves but it may well be that I have an unusually easy child. I will internally raise my eyebrows and leave them the benefit of the doubt.

It’s the most wonderful time of the daaaaaayyyyy!

There are only four things that I absolutely need to do every day, aside from the volunteering I do with my church’s toddler groups (mostly setting up, registration, playing with Little Girl and chatting to other mums with a bit of admin thrown in). I do all of the following things with Little Girl awake:

– Whatever bit of house cleaning I have for the day (I keep it to the minimum and reckon that unless you have a palace, it shouldn’t take more than 30 minutes a day over the week)

– Washing up and laundry – my goodness does it never end? but again, this does NOT take hours.

– Making dinner

– Playing with Little Girl – it happens throughout the day but I do try to have as much unstructured / on her own play time, because I refuse to become a one-person entertainment machine.

During the magical Nap Time, what then do I do? OK so sometimes there MAY be a bit of washing up, simply because I couldn’t be bothered earlier. By and large, I get on average a good hour of me time, and what do I do with it? I rarely write, that’s for sure. My brain simply refuses to engage that deeply. So instead I :

– Go on Facebook

– Play games online. I am one of those annoying people who send you requests for SimCity Phlegm or whatever.

– Check my emails.

– Read blogs I subscribe to – they are legion!

– Play the piano / sing. This is part practice, part fun. It is my main hobby/source of enjoyment so I do try to spend some time doing something musically related.

– Watch some telly I’ve recorded from the previous night.

I am now going to post this and remember something extremely important I do, which would make me look like less of a lazy arse if only I’d not forgotten it. I’d also like to know what other people manage to fit into their ‘me-time’. Go on, make me feel lazy.