For as long as I’ve been a parent, I’ve taken on too much – way too many expectations, obligations and responsibilities.
I’ve compared myself to what other people are capable of doing (or what they appear to be capable of doing).
I’ve compared myself to families with one or two kids, families with significantly more money at their disposal, and families with two parents who communicate or coparent effectively.
I’ve been unwilling to accept what is manageable for me at this time in my life (and most times in my life), and in several instances, I’ve been unwilling to disappoint my kids.
I’ve said yes to many things I should have said no to.
Big things like directing school plays and coaching middle school swim teams and smaller things like running myself into the ground on overbooked weekends because I didn’t want my kids to miss out on pretty much anything.
In trying to prevent my kids from experiencing too much disappointment, they have often missed out on a mom who is present and available.
In trying to make myself available for just about everything, I became available for almost nothing.
I couldn’t think straight. I couldn’t focus. I said things I had no recollection of saying. I couldn’t remember things.
I was exhausted, disconnected, and extra reactive.
I couldn’t see it in the moment, but I had built a life full of physical, emotional and financial chaos; I built a life that was unsustainable, unmanageable, and unenjoyable.
I created the pretty much the polar opposite of what I’ve always wanted.
It wasn’t until I read the book 4000 Weeks that I started to be able to see this.
We are on this planet for approximately 4000 weeks.
Our time is finite.
But we don’t want to accept that.
Social media has only exacerbated things because we are now able to see what everyone on the planet is doing.
A hundred years ago nobody knew if somebody halfway across the country was making a leprechaun trap with their four-year-old on St. Patrick’s Day.
Seventy-five years ago we didn’t see our college roomates’ five-year-old dressed up in a cap and gown for kindergarten graduation.
Fifty years ago we didn’t see our kids’ friends’ bedrooms fully decorated with $1000 in college merch when they announced where they were going to college.
Twenty-five years ago we didn’t see kids’ dorm rooms symmetrically decorated to the hilt like the front cover of Southern Living magazine.
We didn’t see every sport and every activity every other kid in the world was participating in. We didn’t see where everyone went on vacation. We didn’t see everyone’s kids (except ours) holding up a little blackboard with all their favorite stuff on the first day of school, and we didn’t see elaborate photo shoots documenting every month of their development.
ENTER FOMO.
We have become so concerned about trying to do what everyone else is doing because we don’t want to miss out on anything.
But we are still missing out on pretty much everything.
There are over 200 Olympic sports in the world.
Even if you book every season of your kids’ lives with one or two sports, you’re still missing out on most of the sports in existence.
No matter how many vacations you go on, you’re still never going to see 99.9% of the world.
In an effort to cram as much stuff as humanly possible into my life and my kids’ lives, I ended up missing out on most of the stuff they were doing anyway.
If I was physically present, I wasn’t mentally present.
And so I’ve been on a mission to edit my life.
I’m practicing saying no. I’m getting a lot better at that.
I’m learning to be okay with missing out on stuff.
I still struggle with whether I’m picking the right things to miss.
Sometimes you’re going to make the wrong choice and use your time in a way that, in hindsight, you wished you’d used differently.
But that’s all a part of the process.
I used to think I needed to learn how to juggle better.
Now I know I don’t really want to juggle at all.
In fact, the quality of my life seems to be compounding the less I try to do.
I’m thinking more clearly than ever before.
My house is becoming the calm place I’ve always wanted it to be.
My finances are improving.
And I’m significantly more organized.
The more I edit my life, the better it gets.
The less I add to it, the more full it becomes.
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