I have yet another confession to make. I did something insane, wacko and absolutely mad; I decided to take ten whole minutes for myself today. Right? What was I thinking? Did I do anything special? No, not really. I took the time to make my hair look a little nicer (even if it flopped by the time I got to work). I locked myself in the bathroom, ignored all the screaming children, and put moisturizer on my face. Getting nuttier by the minute, I tell ya. Maybe tomorrow I will actually have breakfast!
So, now that you are completely shocked, let’s talk about time. Ten minutes is a lot for someone who is always running around and saying that she doesn’t have any time to give. Since an hour a day seemed so unimaginable to me, after some good advice from my smart friends and readers, I decided to shoot a little lower. There is no need to start freaking out and reorganizing the whole schedule just yet. I started to give it some thought -“What would really happen if I gave myself ten minutes?” Ten minutes doesn’t sound like a lot of time. Would the kids really beat the crepe out of each other any more than they already do? Would my house come burning down? Would the world come to an end as we know it? I am being dramatic, but sometimes that is how I feel. The little tiny bit of extra time spent doing something on myself did make me feel a little guilty, to be honest. My kids might have lost on a little extra cuddle time. Does taking time for me make them suffer? All this mom-guilt can be suffocating, but you know what happened after that time spent on myself? Nothing… and everything. There was no tired and frustrated mother screaming at children to eat their breakfasts faster or to get their shoes on because we would be late - again. We sang in the car on the short ride to school. We smiled. Did everything go perfectly without a hitch? Of course not, but the stress of the morning was gone. I didn’t feel like I had a lead weight on my shoulders walking into work.
Could this be some miracle or illusion? When people say that we need to take time for ourselves so that we can be there for others, they weren’t really full of crepe?
I did not go running yet, nor did I go and make some lovely nutritious meal.
I moisturized. Maybe next week I will shoot for 15.