Beginning

The other evening Michael and I were talking.  We were both voices frustrations about various things, and we came to the conclusion that the state of our house looks like our eating habits looks like our finances looks like our children's behavior, etc., etc.  It's all a pretty big mess.  I've been mulling over that for a while now, and I feel like I am finally noticing a disconnect that I never had noticed in myself before. 

I am a capable, confident girl.  I always have been.  My mother made sure of it, and I am grateful for that every day.  I have done hard things, like bearing four children, getting my MBA, running my own business, and running a half marathon.  In each of these cases, I knew what I wanted and just went and got it.  It was hard, but I always knew I could do it, and I was always committed. 

Now here I am in the throws of stay-at-home-motherhood to four beauties and my days consist of cleaning, diaper changing, associating with friends, making food and teaching and entertaining my little ones.  It is beautiful and it is wonderful, but it is hard.  It doesn't bring the same type of fulfillment as my other hard things.  When I did those things, I had a concrete thing that I could check off.  People stood back and admired me.  It felt good.  But where I am now, this is real, every day life.  There's nothing I can really ever check off.  It's eternal--which is at the same time both discouraging and encouraging.  And people don't stand back and admire me, because it's not really all that impressive that I am living my life.  And to be honest, like every other mother on the planet, I feel like a colossal failure a lot of the time, so I really don't want people standing back to admire me, anyways.  It would just feel like gawking.

So here is the disconnect--I can do concrete hard things, but when it comes to the everlasting, vague hard things, I find myself almost completely lacking in motivation.  Even though I know they are the most important hard things I can and will ever do.  Why can't I seem to put my skill set to use in my everyday life?  Why only in the exceptional cases?  Why can't I treat my everyday life as exceptional?  Am I really that shallow, that if I can't get a prize and have a small audience applauding me for a job well done, then I just don't think it's worth my best effort?

So here I am.  Ready to bring it.  I want to make some changes, and I want to live with purpose.  I want to have regular everyday goals and reach them.  I want to feel good about myself because I improved at something that I wanted to improve at, even if there is no other reason to feel good about it.  So, this blog is dedicated to me, going out and getting what I want, one small but purposeful step at a time.