I stopped writing for a year. It was a time management decision, but one that honored the fact that I could not continue writing this blog without being a hypocrite. Living my best life does NOT mean staring at my computer while my one and a half year old is holding my leg saying mama mama mama mama mama . . .
As a new mom, I am still learning how to balance the demands of parenthood with everything else in life. I wanted to be a supermom, one that could respond to all work emails and phone calls in a timely manner, keep the house somewhat clean, and cook three healthy meals each day. I wanted to exercise daily, spend quality time with my husband, read books, grow vegetables and flowers, meditate every morning and still write quality content for this blog.
I kept running out of hours in a day and eventually crumbled into a sobbing heap on my living room floor. Clearly, I needed some time management skills.
My husband suggested I write down everything that is important to me and identify my priorities. (Sometimes we are quite good at seeing how other people can manage time better.) So I took his advice (and some of my own from 9 Ways to Have More Time) and chose to eliminate what was serving me the least, which with a hint of irony turned out to be this self-improvement and recipe blog.
It was still a very busy year. I spent 41 weeks pregnant with our second daughter and delivered a healthy little girl. We renovated two homes as well as our own kitchen. We watched our girls grow and drank about 1000 cups of tea.
It was a year of decluttering, both our home and our time. And I discovered that decluttering is somewhat addictive. It is my new favorite habit.
Time Management Tip: Prioritize and Declutter Your Time:
- Write down everything you do that uses up your time on a day-to-day basis.
- Number each item in order of how important they are to you and your existence.
- Look at the bottom of the list and stop doing those things.
Recently I feel inspired to start writing again, although this time I won’t let writing become a source of pressure in my life, so I don’t expect to be posting as frequently as I was last year. I also suspect this blog may touch on some new subjects, such as conscious parenting. And there will probably be more recipes this year, because those tend to be my most successful posts (and cooking every day made the cut).
Thank you for reading, and if you find something of value on these pages, please share it. The free time I spend writing is well spent if just one idea here help us life our best life.