On Finding Balance.

I'm not sure if you know this but I do a lot of things. Now, I never said that I do any singular one of them really well or better than another, but indeed, I do lots. For instance and just to name a few, I wife. I mom. I write. I educate. I photograph. On a good day, I clean. 

As of late, I have found that there are days, many, many days rather, when I tend to do them in the wrong order. In other words, my priorities are way off. And it took listening to this guy speak at Blissdom to really figure that all out. 

I know I'm not the only Mom that heard his words and immediately thought, "Holy shit. He's speaking directly to me. How did he know?" 

For me? Hearing Jon Acuff speak was my hinge moment. More specifically, hearing him say things like, "Learn to disappoint the right people," and "Hang up and arrive. Be present in your family," really knocked my socks off. 

Sitting here writing a post on finding balance while my house is a disaster and I'm still wearing my pajamas at 1pm may as well denote me the Queen of Irony but I couldn't waste another minute without freeing these thoughts from my head. 

I can easily count on both hands and feet the number of times that I've "shhhsh'd" The Toddler as he pulled at my pant leg or climbed up onto my desk while I was trying to bang out that oh-so-important blog post. You know the one. The one about crafting that ruffled burlap wreath or my thoughts on dressing your belly bump.

Those posts were so important to me that I was stealing time and focus away from my 19 month old. From the 19 month old who was practically bursting at the seams to show me how he finally stacked his blocks into the tallest tower he ever made. Or how he learned to zoom his remote control car all by himself. 

Heck, I could name at least 15 incidences when I told him, "one more minute" when I actually should have said, "one more tweet." 

Ouch. 

Since when had that stuff become more important to me than spending time with my son? Why have I allowed Twitter, blogging and The Internets to monopolize the waking hours with my toddler that we all know are so fleeting? I mean, I've even dedicated whole posts to how fleeting those moments are! And here I am shhhsh'ing them.  

Of course my next question immediately was, "How do I fix this?" How do I find that balance that I know must exist out there? And the answer is simple. 

Make time for the things that matter. 

All of that stuff that I mentioned earlier? That stuff that I do? That all matters. Obviously it does considering I'm here as a wife, a mom, a writer and a photographer. And I learned that none of those things should or do matter any less than the other. But it's how I make time for them that does. 

Just because I'm a mom doesn't mean I can't write. Just because I am a wife doesn't mean I can't photograph. I just need to learn to do them with the right amount of balance. 

Jon encouraged us to "be selfish with that 5am hour that no one in your family wants." And to not "steal the moments from your family." And it was practically a face-to-palm moment. Why hadn't I thought of this sooner?

Perhaps because the thought of waking up at 5am makes me want to gouge my eyeballs out. 

But I've chosen not to let my kid become my content. I've chosen to hang up and arrive. It will always be a work in progress but I find myself feeling even more fulfilled at just making the decision to be present in the right moments at the right time. 

For me, that is what finding balance is all about. Being present in the right moments at the right time. 

I've been home from Blissdom for two days now and I've been making a concerted effort not to blog while The Toddler is awake. To tweet less and to not tweet ridiculous and random tidbits of my life.

Having glanced at my Twitter profile I noted that in a little over one year I had tweeted 20,866 things. How many of them were profound and life changing? I'd venture to say roughly 7. 

Talk about a hinge moment.