I would like to accept this award for "worst blogger ever" on behalf of my job, who has kept me beyond busy the past 2 months, and school, who has dominated what little time I have outside of work.
No need to rehash the past few months in excruciating detail...here's the quick recap...work, school, sister, mom, work, sick, work, cold, school. Oh yea, I almost forgot to mention, work. Absolute craziness.
The past couple of months have made me realize a few things. My life is not busy right now. My life is busy in general. I feel like I keep waiting for things to slow down, but they never do, and I feel like I've finally realized why. I am a 27-year-old wife, daughter, sister, friend and doggie-mama who has a demanding professional, physical, scholastic and personal life. I am active, energetic, involved, and ambitious. I take on many challenges in my life willingly because that is what I enjoy. I thrive, I am incredibly happy, and I am most successful when I am not complacent, but rather am pushing myself farther and harder than I ever thought I could. I don't know why I didn't recognize this before...my life is busy because I have chosen to make it that way. It's not going to "slow down" because I don't want it to...I love my life the way it is and I don't want to give up anything in it. In fact, I want to add to it!
I've finally come to the realization that I've been waiting for my life to slow down because I am not used to having a such a full and demanding life. I've always had to juggle multiple things at once, but never before like now, so I think in the back of my mind I keep expecting things to change. But, they aren't going to. So, instead of living in this constant state of chaos and anticipation, I need to adjust my way of life to adapt to my circumstances. I need to learn how to better manage all of my competing priorities so that I am in complete control of my life rather than letting all of the things in my life control me. It is when I feel like things are out of my control that I feel overwhelmed. So, here's my plan, laid out in the simplest terms possible:
- Organize, organize, organize EVERYTHING. I love to be organized, so this is more of a fun project for me that anything.
- Delegate. I need to accept that I cannot and should not do everything myself.
- Plan. Plan my days, plan my projects, plan my goals, etc... but also be adaptable and realize that (1) you can't plan everything and (2) plans need to be flexible and changeable.
- Stick to my plan. Use my discipline and motivation to make sure that I adhere to my plans.
- Learn to say no. I can't be all things to all people, and while I love to help as much as I can, sometimes people need to handle their own problems on their own.
- Always make time for fun. It can't be all business all the time, and the fun parts are really what life is about.
- Be thankful every minute of every day for what I have, because I really do have an amazingly wonderful life.
So, now that I've made my declaration, I'm off to put it into action. Here's to Day 1 of taking back control of my life!
