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You are here: Home / 2010 / Archives for February 2010

Archives for February 2010

balance: the final straw

February 24, 2010 by Wendy S

Yesterday, I posted about the conversation on friendship that helped me to realize that I really do need to look at how I’m doing things in my life.

But that was the last straw.  There were other events leading up to that moment.  And it all erupted into yesterdays post.

It started when I attended a parenting session at Munchkin’s school.

Andrea Ramsay Speers, who I’ve talked about before, is a psychotherapist and parent coach.  She came to the school to talk about “The Crazy Pace of Life: The Effect on Kids and Strategies to Stay Sane.”  With two parents who work outside the home (one with a gigantic commute), we know how crazy life can be.

The biggest thing that I took away from this session was that we have make conscious choices.  Instead of getting caught up in everything we need to stop an evaluate if this is exactly what we want for our life.

There are many times where we are just going through the motions of life, trying to get everything done that life is just crazily going on it way.  I don’t want that.  My kids aren’t going to be little forever.  Now is the time to make sure that we’re raising our family in the way that they will be successful down the road.  Plainly going from task to task, event to event, isn’t going to turn out well in the long run.

Conscious choices.

The first one we made was that we need to focus more on each child, individually.  We’ll take turns doing an activity one-on-one with each child.  Also, we’re going to make family time more engaging rather than passive (ie. board games rather than watching a movie).

Then yesterday, I was asked a bunch of questions and I really didn’t like my answers.

Through the wonders of Twitter, I have met some amazing women.  Many of them are mom-prenuers; women who have started their own businesses.  They are using twitter to network and promote and are doing a fabulous job.  I don’t have my own business so for me Twitter is purely social.  (I do, however, help to promote @BigDaddyKreativ )

One of these amazing women, is @OptiMom. She is a life coach who focuses on helping moms live their “opti-mom” life.  She has different events and seminars to talk about issues that affect moms and to help motivate and inspire moms.  With the start of her Cogeco cable TV show, MomU, she has been asking her members questions about balance.

1. As a mom, do you think you’re living a balanced life?
2. As a mom, how do you prioritize your daily to-do list? Putting out the fires vs planning time for self-care.
3. As a mom, how much time do take for yourself every day?
4. As a mom, do you think you can make a commitment to yourself to do more to achieve a balanced life?

If you’re a mom, Laurel would love it if you could answer these survey questions. Thanks!

Trying to put myself first has never been something I would do.  I have always put others first…hubby, kids, family, friends.  It’s just who I am.

So here I am collecting all this great information and advice to make my family and myself better.  Add that to my whack on the head about friendships and I’m done.  I hit the proverbial brick wall.  How did I let all of this happen?  Unconscious choices.

Things really do need to change. I need time for my family, time for my friends and time for myself. My life needs to be balanced.  My kids and BigDaddy’s lives need to be balanced.

I know BigDaddy feels the exact same way.  We’ll be working at this like we always do: as a team.

My first step is to figure out how to tackle the day-to-day stuff to free up time for the fun stuff.  That will be my next post.


My question for other parents out there, how did you answers the questions? How do you feel after answering those questions?  Have you had to make any conscious choices?

Filed Under: balance, family, Life Tagged With: priorities

priorities, distraction and procrastination

February 23, 2010 by Wendy S

Come home from work. Make dinner. Play with the girls. Get them ready for bed. Put them to bed. Sit at the computer. Go to sleep.

Okay, maybe it’s not THAT bad.  But this is what I see when I look at many nights of my life.  This is very hard to talk about.  I’m a bit embarrassed.

It stops now.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been thinking a lot about priorities and trying to figure out how do to do the things that need to get done so that I have time for the things I want to do.

My biggest issue is getting distracted and then procrastinating.  Mainly with my computer and social media.  I get distracted by what everyone else is doing.  Who wrote what on their blog. Who’s doing what on Twitter. Who’s chatting it up on this mom’s forum or that.

But there is a bigger issue. One that has always haunted me since, probably, high school.

I have this strange urge to want to be a part of everything and if some is doing something with out me, I feel I’m missing something.

I know. I did say it was strange.  People have friends other than me. I know this.  It would be weird for people to only be friends with me.

This then spurs another issue… not focusing enough on my family and the good friends that I already have.

Last weekend, I met up with a friend and her kids who I haven’t seen in a long.  We were talking about friendships and she said something to me, that really struck a chord:

“How can I be so-and-so’s friend if they don’t ask about me.”

We were talking about how friendships require work from both sides.  But it’s not like I don’t know this.  Relationships, in all forms, require work from both sides.

I have a husband whom I love and we have great communication and a great friendship.  But when you’re living under the same roof there I don’t need to put out a lot effort to talk to him; he’s always there.  His friendship is very easy which is part of the reason I fell in love with hm and why we’re still in love today.

My other friendships aren’t as strong.  This could be partially my fault.  If I have been so distracted by other things, I may have missed the fact that my friends have tried and I just wasn’t reciprocating equally.

So other than completely disconnecting myself with the internet world (that would definitely solve all the problems), I need to cut back on the time I spend trying to know what everyone else is doing. I need to focus on my life…not everyone else’s.

I just hope that I haven’t ruined too many friendships by being so out of touch.

Filed Under: balance, family, friends, Life Tagged With: priorities

my new band

February 4, 2010 by Wendy S

I got this neat little idea from Avitable.  Thanks!

  1. Go to the “Random Article” link on Wikipedia. Write down the title of the article. This is the name of your band.
  2. Go to “Random Quotations” and the last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.
  3. Go to Flickr and click on “Explore the Last Seven Days”. The third picture will be your album cover.

Put them all together and you get:

Filed Under: friends, fun

funny. i was right

February 3, 2010 by Wendy S

I’m glad that after living in Canada for almost 35 years, I know that as of February 2nd there will be more winter.

The various groundhogs in the area said that there would be 6 more weeks of winter.  Maybe I’m a groundhog…tho I did say 8 to 10.  It has snowed in April before.

Filed Under: fun

weather prediction and prognosticating rodents

February 2, 2010 by Wendy S

Today a small furry creature will pop out of his home and if he sees his shadow or not will help decide how much winter we have left.

I want someone to throw me a party for making this statement:

It’s FEBRUARY!!! There is tonnes of winter left! Heck, there could be 8 to 10 weeks of winter. This is Canada people.

Oh well. What do I know? I’m not a groundhog.

Photobucket

Wiarton Willie, our famous Ontarian albino groundhog is at the center of the spotlight today.  At 8:07am, he will make his prediction.

Already in Nova Scotia, Shubenacadie Sam saw his shadow and there will be 6 more weeks of winter (no, really???  Still in Canada, folks)

And for added excitement PETA is against Groundhogs Day…

Gemma Vaughan,  Animals in Entertainment specialist for the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, said in a letter to organizers of the annual spectacle in Punxsutawney, PA, that  groundhogs, which are normally shy and spend much of their time in burrows, “become stressed when they are exposed to large, screaming crowds; flashing lights from perhaps hundreds of cameras; and human handling.”

Um…I would get stressed in a large screaming crowd as well.  However, I’m not a small furry creature who gets woken up to decide the weather.  I guess for him, PETA would be his union???

So that is Groundhogs Day.

And if you don’t want to read the book newspaper, you can see the movie!

Filed Under: fun, Life Tagged With: news

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mapsgirl@gmail.com

Why “mapsgirl” ?

Wendy is a cartographer! She draws maps!

When not mapping, Wendy is also a mom to two daughters. They are the inspiration of this blog. Passionate about child passenger safety, Wendy was a certified Car Seat Technician in Ontario, Canada from 2008 to 2020. [Read More …]

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