What about your multiple selves?
Kat writes: How could you a cultivate a life that reflects all that you truly are?
This has been a difficult subject for me for several years. I have a deep desire to forge my own path in which I’m earning enough to feel comfortable and enjoy my life, yet I feel that my aspirations aren’t good enough to take me farther than the so-called starving artist. With a husband and three children, I cannot afford to be a starving artist. Instead, I neglect my needs and passions in favor of the more “appropriate” means of living — working outside the home, coming home to do household chores, etc. This doesn’t feed my soul.
Then there are are the multiple facets of my passions. Writing. Tutoring. Editing. Sharing the need to cultivate a thriving life worth loving. Inspiring. It’s all so confusing when broken down into each of its own parts, and all the more worrisome. I’ve been told I need to narrow it down to a niche, but I’ve never been one to be pigeonholed. In high school I had trouble “fitting in” because I was so against being labeled and shoved into a box with one name. I — all of us, for that matter — am so much more than just one thing. I’m a sales associate. I’m a wife. I’m a mother. I’m a writer. I’m a cultivater. I’m a free-spirit. I’m me.
I think I need to spend more time putting the puzzle pieces on the table to see how I can arrange them so as to fulfill myself while still maintaining a functional household.
How will you make time work for you?
Kat writes: But I ask this because I genuinely don’t know: how do you go to work and give as much as is adequate but ensure that you have enough left for you?
Honey, I don’t make enough time for myself. I’m almost always overextended anymore, and the rare occasions when I’m not it’s all I can do to lift my head from the pillow to face another day. Negotiating more time for me seems like a dreadful prospect. How does one even do that while in the process of recovering from rock bottom? Surely there must be some sort of textbook or workbook, right? It seems like such a chore. However, I know what needs to be done. I know that I have to take time to nourish myself so that I can be all of these multiple players — the mother, the wife, the worker bee, the writer, the childlike woman seeking to enjoy every sweet second of her life. I think what I need to do first and foremost is remember that I’m in the recovery phase and treat myself as such. Don’t take my personal life to work; don’t take my work home.
