SISTER WISDOM : build a better life

I get introspective and analytical when I get pregnant. I think it's the knowledge of the huge change to come, the huge change of a new life, new baby. It's a good change. It's miraculous that it happens by all these thousands of tiny changes inside my own body. Baby3 is the size of a lentil bean this week...

So the introspective part is the stuff that we all hit when things get wierd or overwhelming or just when we take time to think. Am I spending my time on the right stuff? Have I lost my priorities? Why do I feel hungry all the time? (Oh, wait, sorry, that's not introspective, that's just early pregnancy talking...).

You know? I start looking at my goals, the way I spend my time, the things I'm accomplishing, or not accomplishing. For the last five months or so I've been working on my freelance writing. I wish I had more to show for it, but it's a slow burn at first. I can feel several different things building momentum, though. It takes time to establish credibility in the freelance world, but once you do, doors open more quickly to jobs that offer more than $3/article. (Just an aside that $3/article is a barbaric amount of money to offer a living human being. Now $5/article...)

Okay. So I've been spending lots of time on writing and things related to writing. The household, and all that pertains to said household, has merely survived during this time. I've done no major projects. I've cooked just enough to keep us alive, and we've still eaten fast food more than I will ever admit. I've done the minimum cleaning and ignored the mildewy corners in the bathroom and the spiderwebs on the ceiling. And we've been okay, but I'm starting to get a little bit tired of "the minimum."

Yesterday morning I spend a couple of hours scrubbing the bathroom. Scrubbing. Hands and knees on the floor, scrubbing. I ran a tub of soapy water and washed the garbage cans, a potty chair, and a booster seat. I took down the shower curtain liner to wash it. I scraped around the faucet and shined the sink. Then I moved on to the kitchen.

And it felt good. I felt refreshed and energized. I'd gotten further behind in what I intended to do in writing that day, and today I worked in the yard instead of catching up. But all the pregnancy-prompted internalizing has led me to a simple conclusion: my life just needs a little more balance. I'd gotten pretty heavy on the "reading, writing, computer" side of the equation and pretty light on the "cleaning, physical, working outside, cooking, creative" side of the equation. As you can tell, I counteract the imbalance by swinging far to the other side for a bit. Now I will start work on making it even out on a regular basis, which probably means some days where I do nothing but sudsy scrubby cleany things and some days where I read and write and stare at the computer and eat fast food for dinner.

I love life. Change is not to be feared. It brings us to better versions of ourselves.