Overwhelmed and Over It

I almost gave myself an out from publishing a blog post today. For many years, I wanted to write a blog and I had so many stop and starts I lost count. For 2022, I decided I was going to stop that cycle and finally commit. 

I read a book (“The Common Path to Uncommon Success”) that gave the amazing advice of making sure you had your content prepared for several weeks in advance.  For example, if you’re creating a podcast that airs episodes twice a week, you should have 8 (or more, depending on how far out you like your cushion) episodes lined up, edited, and ready to go at any given time. That gives you a month of content. If you’re posting to a blog once a week, you would want at least four posts ready to go, which is also a month of content.

I took this advice and at the end of December 2021, I had four blog posts ready to go with the idea that I would post every week on Wednesdays. For the first few months, I kept up with prepped content. During January, I only had to push the Publish button on the posts I had all ready to go, and then spent my time preparing February’s posts. This method was amazing and I felt so on top of things.

Then, here comes March. I was still fairly prepared with outlines and some ideas loosely written, but I started to slip. I still published a post every Wednesday, but I didn’t have them prepped the month before. April was honestly a shit show, and I barely got each of my posts out that month.

Now, here we are in May. I could list all the activities my kids are in, describe the fact that we don’t have any weekdays available at all and Saturdays are busy too, and even go into detail about all the work coming my way at my day job these days.  However, these are just excuses and I’m so tired of excuses. The fact is, I let my motivation slip and I’m now behind yet again.

I find myself really struggling with finding time for things that I really want to do. At least, I think I want to do them? I have so many goals and dreams and books and projects that I get overwhelmed with deciding what to do next and I just sit on the couch and scroll social media (if I ever have a free second) and hope that more energy and motivation find me tomorrow.

In this day when it seems we can do anything, it’s almost too many options. Sometimes I long for the days when life was very simple. Get up, tend to the animals, clean the house, grow from the land, make food, prepare for winter, fall asleep as the sun goes down and do it all again the next day. How amazing does that sound? A simple to do list for a simple day.

Now I get up (never early enough it seems even though it’s 5:40am) and hurry to immediately get some pre-workout in and do some personal development reading and something semi-productive. Then I quickly bust out a workout and start my kids’ morning routines. After getting them breakfast and herding them and all their things to school, I quickly run home (maybe stopping for a quick errand at the store or library) and log into work. I work while of course trying to multitask (throwing in a load of laundry in between meetings, picking up random things here and there) until eventually the kids get home from school. Forget a lunch hour, too many coworkers in too many time zones for that. After work, it’s usually throw some food at the kids and run off to some practice or game. Then we get home around 8 or so, scrub the children, toss them more food and then it’s bedtime. Once they are asleep (or at least in bed, who am I trying to kid?) , I quickly try to catch up on laundry, do dishes, clean something, and try to get my life in order. Only to fall into bed watching something on Netflix (less than 30 minutes, that’s all I can do) and then it’s time to sleep. Rinse and repeat.

Does anyone else’s life feel like this? Every damn day? I try to find holes in that schedule to fit in a blog post, or learning to play the piano, or reading a book for fun, or five minutes on Duolingo so I can re-learn Spanish, and I just can’t find any. Do you know what I mean? Are you there with me?

I’m not sure how to end this post. I have probably posted something similar before and I know I will again. Really this is just me saying I’m still here, I have still posted consistently, and I know I can figure this out.

How are you doing these days? Overwhelmed? Just getting by? I’d love to hear about it in the comments and know I’m not alone!