As part of my scrapbook project I’ve been skimming through journal entries from last year. Mostly I’m looking for anecdotes about the kids that I can pair up with pictures that I have. Today I happened across an entry from this week last year. I was lamenting my lack of organization in my life. I was frustrated by my inability to keep a daily schedule. I was fearful of what looked to be a long and structureless Summer ahead of me. I need not have worried, the summer became packed and stressful shortly thereafter. What I did not realize at the time was that I was in transition. This time last year is when I made the shift into really being a work from home mother. All the years before that I was a stay at home mother. Because I did not recognize the transition until months later, I was confused why all my daily patterns were falling apart. I had no practical experience to guide me in shifting the family schedules to accommodate work. Also I was far too stressed to be contemplative about much of anything. Stress piled on stress from July until the end of the year. I was stressed. Howard was stressed. Friendships were stressed. Finances were stressed. I look back at my self of a year ago and I want to give her a hug and tell her it all works out.
Things are so different for me this year. We’ve all had a year to establish new family patterns around the fact that I have to do work for the business on a daily basis. In fact, the need to structure my days so that business work gets done has solved my usual Summer-lack-of-schedule problem. Usually by the end of June all semblance of a regular bedtime has gone out the window and meals are very irregular. I expected that for this year and it simply has not happened. There are occasional days where everything gets skewampus, but the schedule rights itself in a day or two. Granted, I’ve sometimes struggled to get the work done with all the kids underfoot, but the family schedule has been working beautifully. We still have some stress ahead for this summer. We have three conventions to prepare for, but we do not have all of the other stresses that combined against us last year. We’ve hit a good stride and we just need to keep going.