Back to Routine and Feeling a Little Lost

I have been a bit quieter on here and on social media, a bit of a shock for me to be a webtrovert for a week or so!  The truth is I hold back on social media when I’m not quite my usual self. I’m not sure why that is and why I have decided to share this on my blog rather then over on my Insta stories, but it just felt better to write out my feelings just In case someone else is feeling a little lost in social media or in fact other areas of their life.           I have diagnosed myself with a classic case of back to routine blues and wanted to share my thoughts in case anyone else needed to hear them and in the hope that I’m not alone in sharing them.

My back to routine blues aren’t just because I’m missing the holidays and my babies, there is more to it than that.  So here is how I feel, Yes, I am a little sad that the holidays went by in a flash and I don’t have my gang around but I’m not sad sad. I’m also not the ecstatic parent to have dropped them off and handed them over to the teachers whilst punching the air! I’m somewhere in the middle of this, in that I’m missing my team mates and our picnics and endless ice creams but I’m also craving routine and yes a trip to the supermarket without an entourage and being able to make an appointment to get my brows waxed without 4 horrified expressions watching me!     You see the first day of the academic year, is just like a New Year for me and with that kind of small change brings about new routines for us all and being left with a house that the kids have done their best to wreak havoc in and a list of life admin longer than my weekly shopping list, my default reaction is to stop and do nothing. Meanwhile the voice inside me that says this is all too much and get doing it!  I’m left wondering how am I ever going to sort the house out, catch up on work, declutter every cupboard, purchase new items, make all these phone calls, after school club admin and entertain a toddler and have a moment to myself all in 6 hours (well 5 really by the time you have made your way there and back) It all started with the fear of the list that stopped me from writing my to do list. It actually took me days to even attempt writing it, which I know is completely unhelpful as just writinh it all down can just feel like a help in lifting some of the workload.  I have also been weighed down by the fact I write about how to be organised yet couldn’t even bring myself to write my lists, making me feel like a fraud.

So what happened this week, I stayed off social media to free my time up, and I’m kind of pleased to say that hasn’t worked, its left me feeling even more unmotivated with only maybe a little bit more time to indulge Florence with.  So at least I know that I can still indulge with some scrolling with a cuppa here and there.

I really have been hiding from my back to routine responsibilities, I suppose 6 weeks of more spontaneity and freedom that the holidays brought me as a stay at home parent, meant that the task of now changing routines to producing 4 children all cleaned, fed, ironed, polished and punctual meant anything else on top was seeming all too overwhelming.  Added into this I’m sleep deprived, in the throes of potty training, quite possibly hormonal and then everything seems a bigger deal and my brain seems hazy and tired. Does this sound familiar to you?

Sometimes I feel that we struggle to share our feelings openly with others, maybe because we feel like we have to appear to be positive and look like we have got our shit together in person and online. I can’t help but feel that someone or society is judging you for not being #thankful or #blessed and so these trivial things shouldn’t really matter and that you should keep small negatives to yourself as others have bigger matters to face in life and so you should think yourself lucky. I thought a lot this week and I really feel we should be able to share these smaller overwhelming feelings as these are the ones that contribute to the bigger picture and effect our mental well being.  So here I am sharing that I have felt a little lost this week, my house has been quieter and so I have sat and gazed at what needs doing, maybe even thought about what I need to do, or even attempted some of it to get half way and then give up.   I have procrastinated on pretty much everything and driven myself batty with it.   My motivation and Mummy mojo just quite simply isn’t here, it’s left the building.  

It’s not been all bad I have been fortunate to have coffee and catch ups with friends instead of sorting out the laundry piles, again part of the procrastination, but at least I have had company and giggles. I have made our family dinners early and got them to bed and to the school gates on time.  Yet as always it’s easier to focus on the not done rather than the successes. By chatting with these good friends and experiencing these back to routine blues in the past at the start of terms, I do know that they don’t usually last long, the second week is always far kinder to me.  I usually get my mojo back.  I have come to realise I’m not alone in by chatting to close friends about it has led me to realise not all of us can run from the playground on the first day back into a perfectly re-organised house and home life by the end of the first week. One of my good friends described weeks like this as treading water and just ensure you do what you need to do to get through them and then the rest will come and follow another week. So with knowing this is becoming a normal back to term pattern for me has made me feel more relieved and made me focus on being kinder to myself.  By the end of the week I made myself go and have a bath for the first time in ages, share my daftest thoughts with my husband so he knew how he could be here for me and share the load and also cheer me up with some flowers.  And to stop worrying too much about what I want to achieve I have the rest of the month to tick the lists as they will still be there next week. We will all survive without our drawers being Marie Kondo style and the kids can survive two nights on baked beans and jacket potatoes. Take a step back and see what you have done and think of how you can be kinder to yourself and know that you’re not alone and that your mojo will return. Get up put some make up on, Male yourself a nice breakfast or lunch, sit down with a hot cuppa for a change and a biscuit and congratulate yourself for riding out a tougher week!