Are you also fed up to receive the advice: “You just need to prioritise”. Because whoever gave the advice most often stop right there, which leaves the inevitable still on the table… BUT HOW TO KNOW WHAT TO PRIORITISE?!
To “just prioritise” seemed easy before kids. What I didn’t realise was that it wasn’t necessarily a question of “Do this and don’t do that”. But rather “I start with this and do that later”. Becoming a mom definitely changed the deal. You no longer have the luxury of “doing things later”, yet notoriously you keep putting things off.
I guess that answer the question to an extent: You always have to prioritise whatever is an urgent basic need for your children. In this context, to prioritise becomes more of an intuitive motherly instinct that happens automatically. The tricky part is for everything else that isn’t as much of an emergency.
Let’s say… doing the laundry is something that needs to be done most days, yet tends to be pushed off until it becomes an emergency and you can no longer put it off. Same goes with cleaning in general and your level of sensitive to mess will determine when you hit the emergency button.
But what about other stuff? Non mom-stuff, or house-chores? How to know what to prioritise?
I’ve struggled with this since the day I became a mom about 3.5 years ago.
It’s as if my needs vanished (or rather got squeezed into a tiny black corner of the mind) the day my oldest daughter was born. If you don’t care for your baby, you need to care for the house or your partner. You go last in line.
“Go out”. “Do some self-care alone”.
I don’t know about you but I feel so triggered by those terms sometimes. Obviously it depends greatly on how much sleep I was able to get the night before. But it just doesn’t feel realistic. Unless I hire a babysitter. But what if I don’t have the money to… or more crazy; Don’t want to?
You just gotta figure out a system that works. And that is what I’m determined to do. I’ve spoken to my husband about my desire to write about life for years. I’ve gotten started plenty of times too. But that’s about it.
This time it’s different.
I decided to make an investment and bought a domain name (just that it took way longer than I dare to admit). It’s a funny experience really, because I’ve been running an online art business for soon 7 years. Yet, I never had these issues when starting that.
Perhaps because I was younger with less responsibilities and less experience… I didn’t worry too much of whether it would work out or not because I had nothing to lose. Or (something that I realised just the other day) it was because my husband already had a domain name and was the one who created our first website.
I announced our first workshops though… Well, it doesn’t really matter. Truth of the fact is that this second venture has proven to be quite the challenge and every time I realise it’s due to my poor prioritisation skills to do anything even near to caring for my own desires.
If I want to become a successful home-schooling mom, and be a good role-model for my daughters, that entails standing up for myself and my goals and taking action on them.
As of writing this, I don’t know exactly where I am going with it. All I know is that the first step is to start.
Hit publish. Send it out.
The next step is to create a habit around it. For my art business, the number one thing that kicked it all off was that I committed to post on Instagram every single day. I kept that promise for nearly 2 years, which amounted to more than 150 000 followers. Today I’ve got about 200 000.
However, I haven’t posted in over 6 months as of writing this. It’s slightly embarrassing to admit. The business is still very much running and I absolutely love that I get to do it. But I just get so drained with social media. The comparison game is a sucker and the way the algorithms drag you into shit you don’t really want to see but still waste your valuable 30 minutes on before you fall asleep is draining.
I guess that’s a priority right there.
After my first daughter was born and I got more inconsistent on posting and I thought our business would slow down as a result. Truth is, nothing changed.
I had never dared to try before. Yet the unplanned experience of less social activity became a blessing in disguise. It showed both of us that social had no impact on our business and that we in fact OWNED a real business.
Social media is a third party platform that can decide to change over night.
You have no idea and thus no power over it. You can be gone tomorrow if the algorithms so choose. As a result, the few times I was able to allocate to work (mostly when the kids nap) or after they go to bed, I dedicate to email.
At the end of the day, email involves writing and storytelling, which is part of what I enjoy doing. The only catch is hat I’m limited to writing about things related to art and embroidery.
On here I want to be completely free and write about all the things that swirl around in my mind. I’m especially thinking about things that can help me become a better person and mother, which in turn can help you as well.
If you haven’t already, don’t miss to subscribe to not miss when I post a new article!
And if you enjoyed this article, you may also share it with friends whom you think may like it too.
I'm much newer to Motherhood, my little guy is 4 months old, but I feel almost overnight I had to get good at prioritizing, and somehow I did. Meanwhile this was something I struggled with immensely before. However I agree, something i've noticed is I find it easy to prioritize the household tasks, what my husband and baby need and even working here, yet I haven't prioritized my body work, physically training and other things that are solely for me. As I have been reflecting about the year ahead I am definitely keeping this top of mind and wanting to be intentionally about changing it. It's challenging when you work around nap times! I maintain the meditation "this is simply the season we are in" and it helps me get by. This will not be forever, but I am surrendered to it right now. Great topic to cover, thanks for bringing it deeper into my awareness now!