Totally perfectly imperfect

Sometimes I feel my entire life is an endless series of worries. It seems like everything I have, am and do brings along its (un-) rightful amount of concern, which adds to what I already got on my mind. Then I talk to some person, and during the conversation something comes up, which I have forgotten to worry about. Reading what I just wrote I scare myself when I realize how little I focus on my joys and prides. The good things in my life just tags along in my existence; my worries (mostly about things which might happen, but never actually do) chew the rag in the background of my mind.

So, in order not to drive myself insane I measure it down. I start sorting the important worries from the unimportant ones, only to discover within minutes my thoughts are drifting into pondering about how that can be possible? In my opinion every part, and all the participants involved, together makes up what I call my life. If someone or something loses priority and attention my life is changed… and in spite of a lot of things I am quite happy now.

I often worry I'm not measuring up as a mom. Even though I have all the right intentions; I fail.

I'm not feeding my kids the right foods, all the time. Too often I end up serving the easy meals. The food I know they will enjoy eating and which takes no time at all to prepare. In other words: Less vegetables than I wish. Rice or mashed potatoes mixed with frozen vegetables is an improvised solution I often turn to, even though I know there is a heated debate whether they are as good as fresh ones (of course they are not, they taste differently).

I'm yelling too much. Maybe not really yelling, ‘cause I keep my voice down, but I nag.  I know they can hear me, but I also realize they are not listening. I’m starting to believe my voice makes my words sound like a continual senseless murmur not worth paying attention to. It is just another sound in the ocean of sounds surrounding them.

I find it hard to find time to watch every soccer game my sons play. Last week my youngest played one game as well as one practice. He is still so young the parents are expected to attend their practice. My middle son had soccer practice on Sunday afternoon, match on Monday and Thursday for his own team, then played a match for the b-team on Wednesday because they were a player short. It’s just too much for me to keep up with. Even making sure the suit is clean is quite an achievement, I think. I wish I was one of those faithful soccer-moms who attended every match, drove to every away match and cheered my son along… BUT I do set aside the weekends they play in tournaments and cups.

I've hindered their own style by choosing their clothes until they were 6. Up until then I made the choices regarding their clothes and the assemble they wear. I still buy their clothes, but they dress themselves.

I have learned to ignore the patterns and colours don’t match. That was a defeat I faced when my oldest son was a baby and his father dressed him. I sulked for a while, wanting my son to look nice, but then I remembered that a father is just as much a father as I am a mom, so I swallowed the camel and comforted myself by the decision to dress the kids for special occasions myself. (Stupid thing to do, though, as now I have to lay out the outfit for the entire family every time I really want to take time to look presentable (for ones) myself.)

I've failed, it is bound to be a failure, at least for my own ego and my wish to look ok. Instead I end up blessing the fact I don’t wear much make-up (hardly any, to be honest), as I put on mascara on the way. I dismiss the sneaking, displeased thought that I WOULD have put on make-up and look good, if I only had been organized enough to start dressing an hour earlier.

Even though I have all these failures and setbacks I don’t really suffer from a total breakdown, because, you know what ... I believe we all have worries and setbacks and feel like failures. We just need to keep in mind, and believe, that our kids will survive this! Let's just love the heck out of our kids, and try again tomorrow, and LOVE the other Mamas out there knowing they feel exactly the same:

Totally imperfect!

Friday... or Monday too?

Friday. To many this is the day of the week they look forward to. The end of the week is finally here.

Oh, joy!!!!!!!! (Not an ironical “oh, joy” uttered in a deep voice, this is an ecstatic one! Feel free to raise your hands and shout it out.)

Facebook is swarmed with joyous illustrations with cheerful greetings for the weekend ahead.

On Monday, on the other hand, my Facebook has one posting after another, posted by different people or communities, showing and telling what a strain it is that Monday is already here.

My students moan and suffer from a bad mood… and tiredness. As if the mere day itself is a punishment inflicted on them by everybody else, so everybody else should suffer too; like they do. So they express their discontent… loudly.

I really hope that those who post, or express, either are not really serious; I hope they do it because it is a popular opinion to have and express.

I’m thinking that if you only live a good life two days a week, you are in BIG trouble.

I can’t think of anything worse than to wake up in the morning dreading the day ahead. It must feel like physical pain inflicted on you, every single day, all day. I might as well admit I know this very well. My last year on high school was terrible. To me it was so dreadful going to school I often discovered tears running down my cheeks when on the school bus. It is possible to feel so awful you don’t even realize you cry. But I finished. I completed school and then left the country. I just had to heal, and found no other option than to go away. I was supposed to leave for three months… I returned home a year later.

What an irony I ended up spending my working life in a classroom. I still find it hard to understand how I ended up like that.

I know for a fact that many spend their weekends alone, at home, with nothing much else to look forward to than cleaning, grocery shopping and watching TV. And still, they post excited postings praising weekend as the highlight of the week.

I used to know a man (he was our neighbour when I was child) who rode his bicycle to work every morning at 6:30am. He came home late, never mentioned overtime, let alone overtime pay.

In the weekends he fiddled about in his garden while humming out of tune. He was so pleased with his life. Always smiling, always a kind greeting.

He worked at the same factory for 57 years. He cut cupboard-knobs on the lathe, and was proud of his work.

I am not made to lead a monotonous life. I need variety and challenging inputs. If life gets too predictable I turn restless and edgy.

Maybe I am more of a fighter than a tender blossom, but I have problems understanding how people can settle for an everyday life with no challenges; a life offering challenges is one offering situations where you need to go beyond the limits of your comfort zone.

To take a stand on controversial issues, to care for others, to be opinionated, to be creative and find a balance in life where you truly experience satisfaction in both the smaller things in life like a nice sandwich and clean clothes, a good TV-show or whether to wear a red or blue t-shirt (I know there are people out there who revolve their entire life around what to wear, bless them, but that is not very important to me, so I list it as a trifle detail here) or the big ones like where to live, to settle down with a life partner or in any other way take on commitment. You know: to take part in your environment on your own terms and abilities.

Some people ask me why I stress my kids and my students should do well in school.

To me that is very simple:

I look upon school attendance as an investment in your own future. I find it very important to prepare for a working life of your own choice. Sadly it is hard to get any kind of work with no schooling these days.

It may be engineering, cleaning dishes, teaching or long-haul transportation… the bottom line is you should be free to make a choice of occupation which makes every day of the week a good one. Every day you wake up should be one you look forward to, and then a weekend off to recover from the bustle (a nice bustle is wearing too) you go through all week.

I wish for everybody to wake up Monday morning thinking: “YES! I’m ready. Bring on the week. This is a new start. Finally Monday is here!” And then you post a cheerful greeting on Friday saying how great it is that it’s Friday today… and on Monday you post a happy greeting telling how grand it is that it’s Monday.

OK, I might be a bit overly eager here, but wouldn’t it be great if we all could have 7 wonderful days a week?

No, I am not talking about a life without ups and downs: I’m talking about the consistent feeling of leading a life to satisfaction.