I’m always looking for tips on bringing more balance into my life. It’s something that has slipped away from me in the past year or two.
When my son was about two years old, we felt things getting easier. My husband and I had found our routine with him and we were feeling, dare I say, pretty balanced. So we tried for another.
And got her! Our daughter came into our lives in a whirlwind a year and a half ago and hasn’t stopped moving since. We just do our best to keep up with her. 
But even our newest addition wasn’t what ultimately threw the balance off for us.
Enter blogging.
I’m a pretty new blogger – blogging about a year. I was a magazine writer and editor in my pre-kid life and I wanted to keep up my writing in the time remaining until my kids entered school and I once again entered the workforce.
So I started a blog. I started a blog with the intention of just writing and building something that I could eventually work on full-time (read: in 5 years when both the kids were in school).
But then people actually started reading what I wrote. And bringing friends. And all of a sudden what started as a writing exercise turned into a full-fledged full-time job (minus the pay, of course). Right now. Even though my other full-time job (raising two completely wonderful kids) was nowhere near completion.
It’s a nice dilemma to have, don’t get me wrong. But it has absolutely thrown off the balance for us. We don’t have child care, save for the couple mornings a week during the school year my son attends preschool. My husband and I juggle the kids between us as we always have, except now we have about 60 extra hours of writing, networking, facebooking, etc. to try and fit in.
There’s not a lot of downtime involved in starting a business, I’ve found.
So when we scheduled our family trip this year, we opted to travel to Colorado and enjoy a joint vacation with family. Rather than traveling home to the midwest to visit family, which almost always turns into squeezing as many different visits with family members as possible into a few short days, we opted for an actual vacation. And lucky us (!) we were able to share it with my dad and my sister and her family.
Which means we were able to enjoy family time and spectacular views, encouraging us to just relax, enjoy ourselves, climb mountains, look for wildlife,
jump in fountains and watch water dance…
play on playgrounds (the most breathtaking playgrounds I’ve ever seen)…
dig for dinosaurs…
…all the things we used to do before computers and smart phones were so integrated in our daily routine.
Who knew we had to climb to 10,000 feet to really stop and breathe?
Alissa spends many an early morning to work on her blog, Fun Finds for Families, so she can enjoy the rest of her days looking for bugs and attending her library’s story time with her two kids.
I am so glad you met Alissa! I am not blogging here today. I am at Say It Rah-shay guest blogging “here” today.
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{ 3 comments }
Hi Barb,
What a great post by your guest blogger. I’m going to take a look at her blog. I tried to read your post at Say it Ray Shay but the print was way to lite to be seen. I’m sure it was good also.
Alyssia! I totally feel you on the whole trying to find balance thing! And can I say you are making me so jealous with your beautiful sounding trip. Last month we actually thought we might be moving to CO due to a job offer that hasn’t panned out and now I keep seeing Colorado everywhere I turn. The universe is taunting me
I’m trying to figure out the balance right now. I do know I need to be really careful about my commitments. I over committed last year at my children’s school. This year, I’m telling them up front that I’ll do one commitment each week which means with 3 kids, I’ll get 1 week off each month. I know I need to leave the days more open to make sure I write and to balance with 3 kids in soccer at night.
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