Put On Your Mask First

If you have ever been on an airplane, you have undoubtedly heard the flight attendant instruct you to put on your oxygen mask first before trying to help others, even your children, put on theirs. Why are we instructed to put on our mask first? The answer is simple, we need to have oxygen to survive. And if we try to help others without having oxygen ourselves, we will soon find that we can't help anyone.

The same is true in our day-to-day lives. If we don't take care of ourselves first, we will soon lose the capacity to help anyone else. I've seen incredible mothers who are constantly putting their children's needs ahead of their own. They keep telling themselves that one day they'll get to sleep at a decent hour, one day they'll have time to exercise and eat right, one day they'll be less stressed; and the problem is that all of that lack of sleep, lack of exercise, bad eating habits, and stress catch up to them and everyone starts to suffer.

Soon Worn-Out Mom finds that she's yelling at her kids over simple things that really shouldn't bother her. She snaps at her husband because she doesn't think he's helping out with the children enough. The increased level of stress is palpable in the home and everyone starts to feel it. The children start fighting amongst each other more. The husband grows more distant and tries to avoid the home and the family more and more. And all of these things make Worn-Out Mom have even more stress. And each night she wonders what more she can do for her children and her husband, she's giving them everything.

And that's the problem, Worn-Out Mom is giving them everything and has nothing left for herself. She is giving so much of herself that there is hardly anything of herself left. Worn-Out Mom is losing all of her oxygen...she's losing her life.

We all become like Worn-Out Mom at times. We have all been in situations where we keep trying to put the mask on someone or something else before we put it on ourselves. We might be trying to put it on our job, our spouse, our parents, our volunteer positions, our children, or all of those things all at once. But it doesn't matter what or who it is that you are giving all of yourself up for, it's time to stop.

It's time to stop giving up all of our oxygen and it's time to put that mask on ourselves first. Start making yourself a priority. It may seem selfish to make yourself a priority but it isn't, it's vital. Make time for sleep, exercise, meditation, eating right, relationships, and those long-forgotten hobbies. Start putting yourself in your schedule, literally write yourself down on your own calendar if you need to but make sure that you start giving yourself that much-needed oxygen.

And after you start taking care of yourself an amazing thing will happen, you'll start to feel as if you actually have a life. And, as a side bonus, you'll have more energy and enthusiasm to take care of all of those other things too. So strap on that mask and breathe deep.

Book Review: Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad

This book was actually painful for me to read. I would take it in short chunks because I was determined to finish it. My husband wondered what was going on because I usually devour books. He asked why I didn't just stop reading it altogether. I thought about it but there aren't very many books that I've stopped reading once I've started (I can think of one) and I ultimately decided that this wouldn't be one of them. There were enough good parts in the book that it kept me reading.

The main problem with the book is that they should have just ripped out about half of it. It took forever to go anywhere and there was incessant dialog about nothing or about the same thing over and over again.

I'm really sad about how much I disliked this book. I was really looking forward to it because I love Heart of Darkness and hoped that Conrad would hold true to form in this book. Sadly, he did not.

1st Draft Done! And a Goal Achieved

On Monday it was August 31st...the end of the month, which wouldn't have been that significant except that I'd made a goal at the beginning of the month to finish the first draft of the second book of the Dead Sea Trilogy and I hadn't done it yet. I like setting goals and I really like when I actually accomplish them. Plus, I had remembered setting the goal at the beginning of August and thinking that it would be an easy goal to accomplish because I was almost done.

Well, it turns out that it wasn't as easy as I thought. Mostly because my kids started school, soccer season started, and my schedule got a little out of whack, which led to me slacking off in my writing. Almost the entire month had gone by before I knew it and my first draft still wasn't finished. And I only had one day left.

I tried telling myself that I could just finish the draft up that week and it wouldn't be a big deal. What were a few extra days? So what if those days were in September instead of August? It really wouldn't make that much of a difference, would it?

In the long run, it probably wouldn't make that much of a difference. But psychologically, I needed to finish that book in August. I needed the win. So I decided to go for it.

I took a day off from my day job and got to work. I started at 5:00 am and took very few breaks, mostly just to eat or take care of my kids in some way. My two oldest kids are in school so they were taken care of for the majority of the day, which just left my little one. Luckily her friend came over to play and they played fun little games for hours and were completely enthralled in their play, which left me free to write.

I got more and more excited with each chapter or part that I finished. I started to think that I might actually be able to reach my goal! It was pretty exciting. Then came the point when I had finished all of the chapters of my book and had only the epilogue and prologue to write...and I finally knew what I wanted to put in the prologue! At that point I was really excited.

The prologue had been bugging me for the entire book. On The Watchers it had been one of the first things I'd written and I'd known exactly what I wanted to put in it. But on this book the prologue had eluded me, until right at that moment. It was as if the thing that I'd been searching months for suddenly jumped from behind the wall and surprised me. It's a great moment for any writer.

My two older children came home at this point and the atmosphere changed slightly. Instead of my pleasantly tranquil environment for writing I was now under a barrage of questions while trying to finish my epilogue. I was checking homework, directing activities, and listening to stories about how so and so did such and such, all while sitting at my desk and desperately trying to concentrate. (As a side note, I really couldn't tell you anything about so and so and the such and such that they did but never tell my children that. I'm pretty sure they thought I was listening - it's okay to be a subpar mom for one day right?)

Among all of this chaos I managed to finish my epilogue but then I had to get my son to soccer practice. I rushed him to practice and raced back home and back to my chair. I was so close! 

It was a race against the clock. Could I finish the prologue before soccer practice ended? Could I finish the first draft of my book and meet my goal before the clock reached 6:50? Well let's just end the suspense, I did. I did! I finished my book and was able to pick up my son from soccer practice with a huge smile on my face. It was a great moment!

And my kids may have had whatever they could scavenge for dinner that night (which strangely enough consisted of cereal, grapes, and kidney beans - my kids love kidney beans, what can I say?) but as we sat around the table, I was able to tell them that I'd met my goal and finished my book. And they were genuinely excited for me. And then my oldest immediately went and retrieved his list of New Year's Resolutions. He wanted to see what his goals were so that he could work on them. I guess he'd seen how happy meeting one of my goals had made me and wanted to feel the same way. And of course, Monkey See, Monkey Do, so pretty soon all of my children were looking at the goals they'd made at the beginning of the year and planning on how they were going to achieve them. 

So maybe that day I wasn't as crappy of a mom as I thought.