but I still haven't found what I'm looking for

Thursday, 04/07/16, 8:28am

I've been needing to blog. I tried writing a post yesterday, but never got enough focus to finish it. It doesn't help when I can only get a paragraph out every 6ish hours.

I like to blog/write during the day the best. I'm at home with TK during the day, until RG gets off the bus at 2:44pm, so it's a little tricky to fit in the time. It works best when I give TK something to totally occupy his time while I'm writing, and a fair amount of the time that ends up being screens. But I weigh that with the benefit I get the whole family gets from my blogging and it's worth it. But occupying TK is just part of it; if we're out of the house all day with activities, I often don't get the time. But then occupying our time with activities, getting TK and me social time and outside the house time, is all really important too. And then on top of the blogging time and the social time, I always want to fit in exercise time when I can get it. Sometimes I can do a workout DVD while TK plays with dinosaurs or we can have a "dance party" with awesome 80s music, and lately I've been getting lots of runs due to the influence of Audra, my sister. She is stay-at-home as well, and her kids are very close in age to my kids (oh and they are all boys), so we hang out together a lot. Lately, she's been training for a speedier half marathon, and her workout plan has her running 5 days a week. So, that's got me running about 3-4 days a week, either with her (often with her pushing both our boys in the jogging stroller) or switching off with her (while the other one watches the boys at one of our houses). It's been great to have that running influence in her and the support to get workouts in during the week.

Speaking of running, I've decided to be pretty ambitious this year. I signed up early for an olympic distance triathlon in June. And I had in the back of my mind that I wanted to try for a half marathon (my first) in the fall. I still want to do that, but I've since added some running races as part of the training somewhat. I'm signed up for a 10-miler on Mother's Day and the Bolder Boulder 10k on Memorial Day. And I might actually do a virtual half marathon over the summer if the 10-miler feels ok. I have in the back of my mind some concerns over pushing it into injury, but I'm also trying to be very careful to listen to my body, ice if ever needed after bigger runs, foam roll and stretch often.

I've loved having specific races to look forward to and this year I'm getting more serious about training for things. Last year, I did my first sprint distance triathlons, which were great, but I was already in reasonable shape for surviving the distances and I really didn't train all that much. I want to much more this year, and really I have to. I am definitely not as comfortable with the olympic distances for the triathlon, and I cannot just run a half marathon on a whim. Although I'm getting closer to being able to do that! ;)

Yesterday, and a little the day before, I was having some of those life inadequacy, no confidence feelings. Having no engineering job has definitely contributed to those feelings. Being at home with the kids is great, it's rewarding, but it's often rather thankless. There are a lot of days where I feel totally unproductive and I seem to accomplish nothing. But that comes with the territory, and days where I feel depressed, I sometimes need to let go of the expectation that I do accomplish anything. And that's ok.

I'm not sure where I'm going with my blog post, but that's also how I've been feeling about my life right now. Feeling a little lost and like my goals are just floating around me, some of them really distant and out of focus. Some of them feel really selfish right now, but I also recognize that I need a little bit of that too. Being good to myself comes back in my easier struggle with depression which then makes me a better mom and wife. It's weird, a lot of people ask me how I'm liking being at home. And I don't want to tell people, yeah I like it more because I'm being selfish a lot and taking care of my needs as much as possible. But to some extent, that's a big reason why I like it right now. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the time with the kids, I'm so glad to have a more relaxed schedule for RG completing homeowork, for being able to volunteer for things here and there in the school, and I think that my being at home the last 7ish months has really improved our children in a lot of ways. And all those reasons are huge for the case for me being at home. But that selfish bit, that's a nice perk.

So this may come as a surprise to my longer term readers, but would you have guessed that I wrote as much as I have above without mentioning that Nasser is on a work trip this week? Normally I feel the need to blog about it before, during, at the end because I am stressed out beyond belief at the idea of him being away and leaving me all the responsibility. But this trip has been amazingly different. He left early Tuesday morning and is coming back really late tonight, so 3 day trip. Pretty typical for San Diego. BUT, now that I've survived a week long India trip, 3 days doesn't sound too bad. And although he's really busy with meetings, he feels so much more accessible on this trip because he isn't sleeping most of our day. And of course, he just feels so much closer. Regardless, the fact that I was more confident before and during this trip, shows amazing progress. :)

Since this blog post is all over the place today, and feels a little like I'm just catching up and reflecting on the state of my life right now, I have one bit of bragging to do.

RG wrote a short story last month and submitted it in this young authors writing contest. It was an optional thing to do, and it was awesome to watch him work on it and complete it. It was a good 3 day project, typing away on my chromebook for a good hour or so each day. He wrote it in Google Documents, added a Google image, and the only thing I really helped with was spelling and grammar here and there. It was a little stressful at times when he still had a ways to go on the last day before the story was due, but it was really fun. Anyway, his story ended up being selected (!!!), along with several others, to be read aloud by professional actors in a couple little performances in Boulder and Denver. The first one is this weekend, and we're so excited.