Midweek bliss

Image by Krista Keltanen

♥ Long drawn out morning coffee ♥ Jeans and t-shirts ♥ Ugg boots, not stilettos ♥ Dinner cooked at lunch time ♥ Daytime TV (I know, probably won’t happen, but it could) ♥ Writing all day ♥ Afternoon naps ♥ Midweek laughs with my bestie (I can’t wait to sit on her deck in the sunshine and whittle away the hours chatting) ♥ Breakfast sitting down, not eaten on the run ♥ Dog walks, shop runs ♥ Afternoon tea in the sun ♥ Phone chats ♥ I might even get through my email for once! ♥ Reading, oh I can’t wait to lay on the lounge with a good book, during the day, midweek (this is so novel I can’t even imagine what this will feel like) ♥ No rushing ♥ No peak hour traffic ♥ No watching the time every five minutes for the first two hours of my day ♥ Phone on silent. House silent. Head silent. ♥

Three weeks and counting. My life as I have known it for 23 years will change and my heart and soul cannot wait. I can't stop smiling, thinking of the freedom that will prevail. I have loved my career and feel incredibly blessed for the opportunities I have been presented with (truly blessed), but I am ready.

At one point, when I first started to realise I no longer loved working full time, I had planned to retire when I hit 50. FIFTY YEARS OLD! That is nine years away, how would I have lasted another nine years of full time, five days a week work? Impossible. I have been ready for this for a long time. I am so glad I listened to my authentic self.

Three weeks and counting.

Dreams of a wannabe work-at-home-mum

Image by Heidi Furre

I just realised the immensity of my very recent life changing decision. I’ve worked full time all my adult life so I don’t even know what it’s like to be at home midweek. Even on the odd occasion I have had the opportunity to traipse through the supermarket during the day midweek, I have smiled at how novel it all feels. The other day, after realising just how exciting this move from fulltime to very part-time is going to be, I started to comprehend the extent of my newfound freedom. 

No longer working full time means I will have no more stress about trying to find school holiday care. NO MORE PALMING MY CHILD OFF EVERY DAY ON SCHOOL HOLIDAYS. That means for 14 weeks per year I won’t have to arrange childcare. It amounts to approximately 70 days that I won’t have to wake my child up early to race him out the door, on his ‘holidays’, to go some place else. He can sleep in and spend days in his pjs. I just realised the immensity of the decision I have made.

My days won’t be ruled so much by ‘time’. Sure I will have to get my child to school on time but aside from that, I am going to start living by the seat of my pants, my pyjama pants. I dream of drinking my morning coffee for however the hell long I want. I intend on staying in my pjs until noon, although I won’t be looking at the clock so who really knows what time I’ll change out of them. I'll eat boiled eggs for breakfast. I’ll eat lunch when I am hungry, and not necessarily at ‘lunchtime’. I’ll simply set an alarm for school pick up time, everything in between will be done as and when I please. Less morning routine (thank you oh sweet Universe). School pick-ups. Catching up midweek with friends. More time to write. NANA NAPS! My dog might actually get walked. Dinner cooked before 6pm. Dinner cooked full stop. I can read books midweek (well I never!). Midweek tradesmen appointments. No Mondayitis (THIS, I will celebrate each and every Monday forevermore). Getting home before dark in winter. No more peak hour traffic. Trackies and ugg boots days. Makeup free days. Midweek housecleaning (I know I know, how exciting can cleaning be? – it won’t take up one of my two days off on weekends anymore is how).

I can’t explain just how excited I am. I have dreamt about being at home during the week for years. The last couple of years it has consumed my every day, I have been envious of SAHMs and have been consciously sending the universe a little message that I too, would love to spend more time at home. It just dawned on me the other day that I will soon be a WAHM. Not that I am a big fan of labels, but you know, WAHM is one I am happy to wear.

Now, where are my pjs.

So I leapt

Image by Anna Inghardt

Today was monumental. 

I have been talking for a while about putting my dream into motion. I made the conscious decision to act on my dream 7 months ago, as I wrote here. I couldn’t share too much earlier on about how I would achieve my dream as the bulk of how it would eventuate was relying on my full time job. I don’t blog about my job, I keep my personal and work life very separate, and my blog is about me on a personal level. I rarely talk about my day once I leave the office let alone write about it. However to share my joyous news I am going to partially break my own no-talking-about-work pact.

To give you an insight, I co-own a small business. I also work there full time. I have worked full time since I left high school, some ten years ago. Ok, over two decades ago (I’m 41, yeah whatever). 23 years to be exact, 23 years of full time employment. I am exhausted. I’m done. I am sociable by nature so I love going in to spend the day with my colleagues and staff, but I have reached a point where I simply want to be home more. I want to not have to spend five mornings a week rushing around preparing for my day in the office. I don't want to ride that treadmill anymore, jumping on as the alarm goes off and jumping off at bedtime every weeknight. I didn’t take maternity leave or have a year at home after my son was born, I went back to work weeks after his birth. I have missed assemblies and school excursions. I haven’t had the opportunity to pick my child up from school every day. I haven’t had the opportunity to be able to cook dinner before 6pm on weekdays. I haven’t had the opportunity to come home after the school run and enjoy my morning coffee or make my bed at a leisurely pace rather than flinging the doona over as I am trying to find something to wear. I’ve missed all that. My choice, but it hasn’t been easy.

Enter my blog. I started my blog on a whim July last year and it has been the catalyst for me realising my love of writing. I came to the realisation last year that the one thing I want to do every day is write. I want to focus on myself, my home and my child. I want to focus on spending my day pleasing my soul. I am not a ‘carer’ by nature (you know, those kinds of people who just love to mother others and love to go out of their way to make sure others are happy?) and yet I have wound up in roles whereby the majority of my responsibility was caring for others and ensuring others' needs were met. Now it’s my turn.

Today I received the best news I could have imagined. My request to change my full time management role to a part-time business role, two days a week, was granted. I cannot tell you how happy my heart is. I can’t even start to imagine what this means for me and my dream. I will have three days (maybe two, I might give myself an extra day off) to concentrate on my writing. I can take photos and get stuck into my love of food photography. I might even do that graphic design course I have been dreaming of. And I can attend school assembly if I want and pick my child up from school. I can shower at noon if I like. I probably will.

I felt terribly scared of this move when I first started to think about it. What if I don’t get enough work, what if I can’t pay my mortgage? I will, somehow I will. All I know is that if I continued on doing what my heart was no longer passionate about I would slowly die inside. And my creative soul wasn’t letting me get away with that.

So I leapt.

cake crumbs & beach sand's self-love soiree

What is self-love exactly? Some people think it is narcissism, but it isn’t. It is about self-awareness and taking responsibility for oneself. It is respecting yourself and knowing your own limits and boundaries. I feel self-love on some level is essential for a healthy life balance. And as a full-time working mum I know self-love is imperative to maintaining sanity and self-worth. If I don’t love and respect myself, no-one else will either!

I have no trouble putting my own needs ahead of others'. I am not talking about my family, their needs are paramount and always come an equal first with my own. I am talking about sometimes saying no to invitations, setting boundaries and openly voicing them with others to ensure others are aware of my boundaries. I believe when it comes to our own needs clarity and consistency is our own responsibility, and we each have the individual power to assert it. And what if others don’t like it? Tough.

I fill my every weekend with self-love. My two days off are mine to spend with my family, everything else comes second. This weekend my house chores came second. Or maybe third or even fourth. I looked around and pondered about what I could do, what small amount of cleaning would make the abode look decent again, and then promptly packed the boot of the car with towels and boogie boards and headed for the beach. Funnily enough the mess is still there, and I don’t care. I am still daydreaming about how beautiful the beach was, and the laughs and chatter with my family filled my soul with love. A clean house would never do that.

What did you do for yourself this past week that filled your heart with joy? Did you take time to do something that makes you smile? Did you put aside the chores to do something fun instead?

This is the first of my self-love soiree link-ups, please don’t leave me hanging. Share something with me, ANYTHING! Heck you can post a photo of a cup of coffee if you like, trust me, I will enjoy it. 

Grab my button link below and add it to your post, then link it up baby! And please, if someone other than me does link up, head over and say hello.  

<a href="http://cakecrumbsbeachsand.blogspot.com/" target="_blank"><img src="http://i1099.photobucket.com/albums/g384/cakecrumbsbeachsand/Selflovebutton-3.jpg " border="0" alt="cake crumbs and beach sand" /></a>

52 Weeks to Simplify Your Life - Weeks Six & Eight

Week six: Goal setting and priorities

I am not one for planning too far in advance, I like to live more in the moment and take each day as it comes. I do however love to set myself goals. I am very realistic in my goals and possibly border on the conservative, but as part of my self-development journey I strive to be the best possible version of myself. When I reach a goal, I like to set another. I have discovered in the past that setting goals often sets the path for working towards bigger dreams. It reminds me that no matter how challenging, achieving goals induces motivation and more drive, and once I achieve a goal the rewards are priceless.

After discussing with my boys what we see for our family in weeks three and four of the SYL12 challenge, I realised we shared the same motivation for a relaxed and calm home. I strongly believe we are what we create, and our home is what we create. So if we strive for relaxed and calm, relaxed and calm it will be. Now as easy as that sounds there is work and awareness involved. Obviously we still feel anger and stress at times, but learning to leave that at the door when we step inside is something we work hard at. And the results are ours to enjoy.

In keeping with the relaxed atmosphere we enjoy I have set a goal to achieve a proportionate work/life balance. As I have previously mentioned, I have always worked fulltime, since I left high school in fact. It is all I have known in my entire adult life. I have noticed, particularly over the last few years, that my drive leans more to the ‘life’ side of the work/life balance scale than it has done in the past. I used to assume work as a fact of life, something we need to take responsibility for, and something we need to put as much effort into as all other aspects of our lives. I still think this is true however, my interest leans much more heavily into the family side of life now. When I was single I didn’t mind working 12-16 hours a day, doing overtime on my days off. I worked like that for a good decade in the casino industry, and I quite enjoyed it. Now however, I don’t mind admitting my motivation to work so hard has slowly but surely diminished and I crave to spend more and more time at home. This leads me to my goal of establishing more of a work/life balance, tipping the scales over more into the ‘life’ side.

I have already started to put this into motion by recently reducing my work days to four and a half days a week rather than five. The impact of working half a day less is remarkable, even only two weeks in. This in turn creates more balance in time spent at home and the knock on effect there is amazing. I now have half a weekday to get all those jobs done that need doing and I never make time for being at work all day, every weekday – getting tradespeople in to get things done on the house, making those business hours phone calls I don’t usually get to make, housework. A small step with huge results. And I feel this is only the start of me balancing life a little more over to my family and home side rather than have it teetering in the middle with work.

My second goal relates to my passion, writing. I only rediscovered my passion for writing last July when I started my blog. Since then I have opened a whole new part of my mind and soul that has been craving creativity. As part of this recent realisation I have decided, quite quickly, that I intend to make writing a bigger part of my life. After taking the plunge and submitting my very first magazine article (which by the way will be featured next month) I decided this year was going to have a heavy writing influence. My goal for 2012 is to write one magazine article per month. I may or may not submit each month’s article, however I will write 12 articles this year. It doesn’t seem a lot on its own however I also write my blog, write a monthly blog post for We Heart Life and manage the social media for a small local business. Writing seems to have taken over my world over the past six months, and I love it!

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Week eight: Happiness defined

I found this week of the challenge the easiest. I have been actively striving towards a consistent state of happiness for many, many years. And although as Deb mentions, no-one is happy 24/7, no-one is in a permanent state of sheer happiness every moment of every day. I am however a big believer that we create our own happiness. Yes I have moments of feeling flat, maybe even moments of feeling blue, but I accept those moments without completely succumbing to them, and move on as soon as I allow myself (which is usually very quickly). I am happy as I choose to be happy.

Making a list of things that make me happy is too easy, and as you will notice it ranges from the trivial (coffee) to the simple.

♥ My son’s smile.

♥ Chinwags with my boys on a Friday night after a long week.

♥ Cooking.

♥ Blogging.

♥ Writing.

♥ My morning coffee.

♥ My Friday night coffee.

♥ Saturday mornings.

♥ No alarm on the weekends.

♥ Supermarket shopping.

♥ A full pantry and fridge.

♥ Fresh flowers on my dining table and kitchen window sill.

♥ The smell of my son’s cheek.

♥ Seeing my husband and son talk boys stuff.

♥ Summer.

♥ Days at the beach.

♥ Email from my Mum.

♥ My Mum’s beautiful artwork (of which I have on my walls).

♥ Anything Finnish.

♥ Spending time with my brother and his family.

I could go on. I think it’s safe to say it is the simple and smallest moments that bring me most joy. These simple moments are what make me truly happy. Practicing them daily is easy, it’s how I prefer to spend my time.

What moments bring you most joy? What stands out on your list of things that makes you happy?

My new Tuesday

Last week I mentioned that I have reduced my working week from five days to four and a half days. I love it. Not only do I get to drive my son around in the morning to and from his school program, I get two hours to do with what I please. And I have decided to use those two very much appreciated spare hours wisely. Thank you Self-love. "You're welcome" says Self-love, "you deserve it."   

A lovely little lass recommended I try the Pickled Fig Cafe in South Fremantle as it is minutes away from the school. With two hours spare I thought why not. As I was sitting at the Pickled Fig this morning, laptop within reach, camera in hand, I decided this might just be the way I spend my Tuesday mornings for awhile. 

I'd already had breakfast at home but I went for the Eggs Benedict (my favourite) - poached free range eggs, smoked salmon, spinach, cassalinga and tangy hollandaise. And a very good cup of coffee. Very good. I may just have to visit there again next week, just to see if the coffee was really that good.

I have to say I was very impressed with South Beach too. I am a tad biased when it comes to our beaches, my heart is devoted to Cottesloe Beach. I haven’t seen a beach as beautiful even in Broome or Thailand. Big call I know, but the soft white sand and beautifully clean, clear water at Cottesloe is truly breathtaking in my opinion. We’ve been frequenting Cottesloe for a good decade (actually I used to spend my summers there as a teenager), we clock up many hours on the sand come summer, and yet I still swoon over its beauty. We don’t venture further up the coast to any other beaches as we're happy with Cott as our stomping ground. I didn’t walk down onto the sand at South Beach but from where I was standing it looked very serene. There is a dog beach there too, I saw many wet doggies trotting around smiling, it was a very peaceful environment.

So this is what some folks who don’t work on Tuesday mornings do. I like it.

Self-love saves the day

Every so often I have what I call a ‘mini-meltdown’. Now I call it ‘mini’ as it isn’t really anything like a meltdown, I am exaggerating a bit with the use of that word. But for me, a person who is usually fairly calm and organised enough to function comfortably from day-to-day, any deviation from my usual calmness needs a word that appropriately describes the disarray in my mind. The cause of such mini-meltdowns, as I have worked out over the years, is simply me being disorganised and temporarily losing my grip on the crazy busy life of a working mum. And when being disorganised culminates into a whirlwind where one week rolls into the next without anything too constructive going on in my environment, my brain explodes. As does my soul.

About two to three weeks ago I saw the signs of one of my mini-meltdowns looming. The smallest of tasks started to become way too tedious, I was huffing and puffing under my breath and everything just felt oh so hard. I felt tired, no, I felt exhausted, and if someone asked me to do the smallest of tasks I just felt like screaming “NO!” I reached out to friends on Facebook (as you do) and asked for tips to help me organise my housework and chores a little better so they don’t take up most of my weekend. I listened, I read, I implemented. The following Monday I started doing a small bit of housekeeping every night after work. I intended to spend an hour each night, Monday to Thursday, then Friday night off. But as it turns out 30 minutes a night seems to be sufficient. You see I used to, up until two weeks ago, do a big clean on the weekend. The upside of this is that the house looks schmicko and that bleach smell and shiny floors just float my boat. But the downside is it takes up a good half of one of my two days off, and it doesn’t stay so schmicko for long. Add garden tasks, laundry, grocery shopping and other chores to this and my weekend was being chewed up by jobs. The other downside to the one big clean is that by midweek the house would start to look dishevelled and by Friday it was seriously feral. Now, by doing small tidy-ups every night (and even some mornings before work) the house looks clean and tidy all week long. I love it! And then come the weekend I have freed myself up about four hours, so now I don’t mind getting into the garden again.

One change to my routine and I started to feel organised again. Secondly I decided it was time to make another change to my work/life balance. I have mentioned before that I have worked fulltime for 23 years. Twenty. Three. Years. 23. But don’t worry, semi-retirement planning is already in effect, and I won’t be a 65 year old new-retiree I can tell you that much! Where my husband will happily work until old age I have too many hobbies I would like to indulge in. And sometime soon.

It’s ironic that Valentine’s Day, the day we profess our undying love to our beloved, marked the first day of my loving myself that little bit more. Effective this week I have reduced my working week from five days to four and a half days. Half a day you might think, meh, that’s not much. But it is to this 23-years-fulltime-working mama! A day whereby I get to ferry my child to school commitments for the first half (he attends a program out of his normal school for one morning a week - I love the ferrying bit, very novel for a fulltime working mama) and I get to work from home in the space that I love most for the second half. This just fills my heart with joy.

Today on my first morning of school-ferrying duties, I had one hour in between ferrying. One hour, on a Tuesday, during the day, to do with what I wanted. I walked into the local mall BEAMING! A trip to Medicare to claim on a receipt I have had for a month (which cannot be claimed online), a trip to Dymocks to finally claim my Dymocks points for receipts from six months back (resulting in $36 credit, thanks for coming) and a trip to Myer to stock up on face love stuff. This might seem like fairly everyday stuff us mums do, but for me to be doing this at 10am on a Tuesday is just unheard of. Beaming.

I often talk about taking action if you're unhappy with something. I enjoy my job, I have poured my heart and soul and lots of time into the company, and I do love it. But what I love more is my home. And being able to devote one extra day each week to being in my favourite space is just a dream come true. Even if I am working.

Happy Valentine’s Day Self. Best Valentine’s Day present ever.

What a silly choice.

In my eBook The Self-Love Guide for the Working Mum I talk about looking after yourself. I talk about taking responsibility for your own actions and own choices. I talk about learning to say no and sometimes, just sometimes, putting yourself first.

But most times I genuinely enjoy putting my son before my own needs to see him happy. I am happy to make sacrifices that will provide my child with stability and a well-balanced home life, and the cost of such sacrifices pale in comparison compared to the joy his smile and happiness brings me. They might only be small sacrifices but foregoing things I have enjoyed in the past doesn’t seem such a big deal to me. I am happy to give up the socialising to the extent I used to enjoy it to spend time at home with my boys. I am happy to give up a new closet each season for trips to Bunnings and a comfortable home. I am happy to spend more at Coles Supermarket than Myer. I am happy spending less time doing things I love to do things my boys love, to see them smile.

So it saddens me sometimes when I realise how I have worked for so long and have had to sacrifice after school pick-ups to work. I regret that choice I made ten years ago to work fulltime after my son was born. I regret that I didn’t settle for renting instead of buying our own home, and now I am committed to financial responsibilities that won’t allow me the freedom to not work. Yesterday was my son’s first day back at school after the summer holidays. I felt so sad. I walked him into his class full of grade six kids (he is grade five) and I felt sad. I still think he is my 'baby' and I find myself surprised at how big he has become. I feel like we entered pre-primary, I blinked, and now he is in grade five. For now he loves that I walk into class with him, but will he still enjoy it in another year, or two years? What if he suddenly decides he does not want me to walk him into class and I have spent the past five years working instead of picking him up from school and being there with him at ten minutes past three instead of 6pm? Why didn’t I put the financial responsibilities on the backburner for those extra three hours every afternoon?

I envy stay-at-home mums but I know it was my choice. What a silly choice.

The Self-Love Guide for the Working Mum eBook

Several years ago I started to realise I needed to fine tune this working mum gig. I was finding myself too frequently exhausted and struggling to get through the million tasks that is required of a working mum. I was becoming resentful for my choice to work and knew that I had to do something.

I started out focusing on small areas by establishing boundaries and setting up a solid routine. It didn't take a lot of effort or a lot of time, however until I made an active decision to make those adjustments I was blind to my own power in gaining control over my day-to-day life.

I have compiled a series of no-nonsense tips and would love to share them with you in my very first eBook, The Self-Love Guide for the Working Mum. It isn't rocket science and I am not the first working mum to work it out, but I feel sometimes we all need a little reminding. And especially when it comes to loving ourselves and giving ourselves the attention we deserve within a hectic working mum lifestyle.

The Self-Love Guide for the Working Mum isn't only for the working mum, it is a practical guide for any mum that finds herself on a path of self-development and is keen on practicing frequent acts of self-love. It is compiled of 40 pages of text, beautiful images by Flossy Photography and a lovely design by MooZoo Designs. Not only is my eBook full of sensible tips it provides the reader with an easy-to-read layout. I have provided you with two testimonials written by Stacey of Veggie Mama and Debra of Home Life Simplified as seen below.

To purchase your very own copy of The Self-Love Guide for the Working Mum for $4.95 please click on the link below. Following purchase via Paypal you will instantly receive your individual download link, the eBook downloads in PDF format. If you have any problems receving your downloaded copy please contact me via email cakecrumbsbeachsand@gmail.com.

I hope it inspires you to make relevant changes to your busy life and that it contains something useful for you. I welcome feedback via my email.

Testimonials

Tired? Busy? Frazzled? A lot of mums are. Peggy has made the decision that as a mum, she doesn't want to be, nor needs to be these things. With a few conscious choices and a huge dollop of being kind to herself, she is striking a balance between work and family that is getting that much more successful every day. Her self-love philosophy colours all her decisions (I'm particularly fond of the one where she gives herself permission to be in her PJs occasionally and just BE), and that in turn filters into the many compartments in her life where people are relying on her. With excellent, practical advice dispensed with humour and humility, I recommend this book to anyone who wants to know how to start making life work better, not just mums. But as mums, we're often the ones that need it most!

Stacey Roberts - Veggie Mama

"The Self-Love Guide for the Working Mum" is a great read for any mother really. It offers practical suggestions for managing day to day life so you can take care of yourself, your work life and your family. One great point she shares is her son not taking part in outside school activities since he already spends so much time at school and after school care. She prioritises their time together over the "should" of others' expectations of what is usual for a young boy's Saturday schedule of sports activities. I love Peggy's "get real" talk, my favourite example of which is "cut the drama" in chapter four when she talks about ridding your life of everyone else's drama. One of the best sections of this eBook is the one tackling mother guilt for working mothers - Peggy shares the ways she balances her work with still being there for her son. Such a great eBook I am sure many mothers will gain both fabulous tips and perspective!

Debra Dane - Home Life Simplified