I get burned out on being a mom sometimes. Then I feel bad that I’m burned out, and try to power through, but then I get more burned out. And then if I keep going, I’m likely to explode.
I’m trying to notice the burnout feeling early and take a break before the “about to explode” feeling happens.
Tonight I exploded.
I screamed in frustration.
Then my husband asked me to take a break.
Then I took a break. In the future, I’d like to take the break BEFORE the explosion. I can explode while I’m on my break: I can swing on the swings, sing, hit things, run, move, dance.
In couples counseling, Alex and I are talking with our therapist about parenting. Our therapist says that when setting boundaries with our kids, the two most important things are consistency and followthrough. Be consistent with the rules, and follow through on what you tell the kids will happen when they follow or break the rules.
When governing myself and my creative work, I sometimes lack consistency and followthrough. I’ll have ideas for projects, I’ll even start some projects, but then I’ll leave them hanging, unfinished. I’ll contact friends about potential projects, then fall off the face of the earth for a while and let the project and my friend’s expectations die. I’ll make invisible rules for myself about when and how I’ll work, then I’ll break them and say they were stupid rules in the first place.
But occasionally, I do follow through. Like right now, I’ve given myself a challenge to post on my blog every day for a month, and I’m about halfway through.
I’m being consistent!
I’m following through!
Magical habit tracker sticker with gold foil. Oooooh, baby.
My takeaway so far from posting every day is that it makes writing so much easier. I’m not as precious about what I post or what I share, because I’m sharing every day. No ideas get held too tightly, nothing gets too polished, I’m just putting ideas out there into the world.
I told my writing partner Katja this morning that posting every day is helping my creative flow. When I was posting less often, ideas would get stuck and fester inside me. I had the experience of sticky creative stagnation.
Posting to the world makes me braver. And happier.
My friend J and I showed up at Holocene last night to go 80’s 90’s aerobics dancing, and as we arrived, a whole squad of other women was showing up. They were dressed to the nines in their aerobics gear: sweatbands, leotards, legwarmers, sequins, the whole nine. J and I were dressed up too, and I waved a big happy hello. They waved a big happy hello back–it turned out they were J’s friends that we were meeting. We commented on each others’ outfits, J caught up on chit chat with them, I introduced myself, then we took a rad group photo.
We entered the club soon after 7pm, and soon we were all aerobicizing together in our silly and wonderful outfits. Our group of ten or so made up the bulk of the crowd, and we brought an ebullient spirit. We dutifully followed the moves of our instructor, who made it known that she was not only unqualified to lead our class, she was also completely untrained. She sipped her aperol spritz between exercise moves.
Our unqualified, untrained instructor.
I watched us moms bounce around with glee, happy to follow a leader, aerobicizing in unison, stretching our arms over our heads in big, sweeping movements, then practicing a grapevine all together. Our instructor would lead the group for maybe ten minutes or so, then she would leave us on our own as the music and projected aerobics videos continued. When the was gone, some of us kept following the videos, some of us spun ourselves into our own dance worlds, some of us pranced around with friends.
All of us danced in earnest, faces serious then smiling, like we all had something we needed to work out on the dance floor. Something we needed to let go of, some stress that could be set free by bold makeup, sparkles, and jumping jacks. The something for each of us was different, but we were connected, we understood the deep need to shake it off as we bounced around the floor and let our hearts get lighter together.
My tai chi teacher asked me recently why I continue to train in martial arts, and what I want to get out of my training.
I told her, “I just want to keep training.”
There are endless mysteries to uncover within tai chi training. Uncovering mysteries and feeling a deeper sense of connection with the world are why I train.
She said, “Well that’s good. You’re not saying that you want to have ‘power over’ something, which is why a lot of people train.”
I felt in that moment like I’d passed a little test. Like I’d said the ego-free thing to say, and that it had come from a true place. I felt a buzz of contentment.
Partly, though, my answer came from a place of injury. I had to stop training in my last art because I kept getting physically hurt. Plainly put, my partners and I were hitting each other too hard in the name of toughness. I saw how our training was beginning to break our bodies. How some of my former teachers had had major injuries and were needing joint surgeries. I suspected some of these surgeries were necessary due to years of grinding bones in unhealthy ways.
In my new art, I have found a practice that offers more healing than harm. So when I said to my teacher that I just want to keep training, I was also speaking to longevity in the martial arts. If our art breaks us, we will need to stop our art. If our art heals us, we are allowed to continue practicing.
