Showing posts with label shauna Schoeber. Show all posts
Showing posts with label shauna Schoeber. Show all posts
Friday, May 20, 2011
{Mama Needs a Time-Out!}
Shauna... is a stay at home mom of two girls, she's the author of the "Waypoint" book series, and her personal blog"Breathe, Smile, Pray...Repeat." Her girls keep her on her toes, and have been the inspiration for many blog posts, here and on BSPR. She's just an ordinary mom trying to master the most natural job in the world.
I’m writing this a few weeks early (5/5/11) because of a trip I’m taking, and I felt inspired today because I am so stressed out, going so insane and in need of a much needed time out. To the point of wanting to scream and cry and lock myself in my closet…with my children’s Easter baskets.
My days start around 6:30 am with a screaming toddler and end hopefully around midnight if everyone goes to bed and I have gotten chores done and hopefully some writing on my next book… which feeling inspired when I am absolutely drained, annoyed and well, pissed off? Yeah that’s gonna happen! So needless to say I am exhausted, I am cranky, I yell too much, and stand in front of my refrigerator often looking for something…anything to make me feel better. But since I have been watching my sugar intake sadly there is nothing good in my fridge (that would constitute binging on, at least).
Here is my dilemma, I need a break so badly, I want one so badly, I want to sleep in until noon and be awakened by a room service person bringing me a veggie omelet with a bran muffin (wow I am getting so old) I just realized how lame my “dream” is, bran muffin, sheesh! I remember the days before I had kids, Awe College, scheduling classes to start after 10am, sitting at the Starbucks as I leisurely read my assigned work. Staying up late, cleaning and having things stay tidy…oh sorry I got lost for a minute there. Anyhow where was I? Oh yes - I’m desperate for a break!
When the time comes for me to take one though, I feel horribly guilty and frankly - terrified. What if something happens to the kids? What if something happens to Dave and me? What if there is the earth quake that everyone says there is going to be, and I am on another continent enjoying an adult beverage? And now thanks to recent events, what if there is a terrorist on my plane and I go down and become a flight number?
I know these thoughts are irrational, but I also know that my trips are always tainted with my worry. We leave for Cancun in a week, I am beyond excited, especially after a day like today, but I know the night before we leave I will think of every excuse not to go, (I have already checked the cancellation insurance, yeah, it’s pretty specific about injuries and such, so that probably won’t work). But seriously I will be in tears as the flight attendant tells me where the emergency exits are. I will be profiling every single person on the aircraft, (not for if they may be carrying a bomb, but as to how easily I can knock them over and beat them out the emergency exits) and my stomach will be in knots the entire flight, which will in turn make matters worse because I swear to God that I WILL be the person that gets sucked into the airplane toilet and so I’m afraid to use them.
MY POOR HUSBAND.
Here’s the problem, I bitch, I wine, I complain… “I need a break; you get to go to work! You get a break; you get to miss the kids! You get adult time! All I do is dishes and diapers and I vacuum and then YOU walk in with dirty boots!” So he says, “Okay Merry Christmas YOU are getting a break, we’re going to Cancun!” I cry, get excited, start planning ridiculous expeditions, and then as the date approaches I start to freak out again, “We didn’t get our Will done! What if Madi loses her first tooth while we are gone? Will your parents know to save the tooth? What if our plane goes down? What if they get sick, I can’t leave a sick kid and go on vacation. What type of a mother am I that I want a break from my own kids?? Blah blah blah…crying...blah blah…more ridiculous crying, wailing now...blah blah!”
Again, MY POOR HUSBAND.
He can’t win, he tries, but he can’t because I am officially psycho! This man tries so hard, he gets up every morning before everyone else, he tip toes around the house as to not wake the kids, or I, God bless him. Goes to work where he gets yelled at by co-workers or the public, apologizes all day long for stuff that he didn’t do, most days comes home for lunch so I can get five minutes to myself, goes back to work, then somehow gets in his truck comes home to a house of crazy. He then will, a lot of nights, make dinner, play with the kids, get yelled at for not taking his work boots off, do bath time, cut toe nails, read bedtime stories, and then get up five times to tell the kids to go to bed because I am dead on the couch. Then he watches a show or two, falls asleep on the couch, is rudely awakened when it’s time to get in bed, and finally falls asleep, just in time for his alarm to go off again. I seriously don’t know how he does it.
But I’m so glad he does.
I know he needs this trip as much, if not more than I do. I know he has earned it, me - not so much. So, this week I am going to bite my tongue when all my crazy worries fill my brain, I am going to try to take a sedative before the flight so I won’t panic and cry the entire time, and I will force myself to enjoy my time, our time.
Sure I feel selfish taking time away from the kids, but something I do know: it feels so good to miss them! It feels so good to wonder what they are doing, it feels so good to be sitting over a long and relaxing dinner and end up talking about our kids.
It feels good to WANT to be home.
So if you need a break, take one. Don’t feel guilty or afraid, whatever is going to happen…is gonna happen. But if we don’t take care of ourselves and our relationships, they’ll burn out. I know that for Dave and I, our relationship has to be number one, as much as I know I’ll get grief for saying it, the kids sometimes have to come second, because if mama and dada aren’t happy, then no one is happy. Even if it is one night away, just locally, take it, if the opportunity comes - seize it! In the long run, your kids will be happy you did, your kids will be happy you valued yourself and your relationships. It may take years for this to happen, but one day they’ll be thankful that their mother isn’t insane.
I can happily say my children's Easter candy has survived another day, no guarantees for tomorrow though.
PS. If the worst happens while on this trip and I don’t come home, please someone get Madi’s tooth from my in-laws, I just know that thing is gonna finally fall out while I’m gone!
Shauna, is a the author of the Waypoint Book Series as well as mom of two monkeys of her own. You can find Cache Quest Oregon, the first book in her series on Barnes&Noble.com. For more infomation on her book go to www.waypointbookseries.com.
Friday, April 8, 2011
{"Like" Me}
I’ve been depressed lately. I know right now I have a good reason to be, I’ve been homebound for a few weeks due to a recent surgery, I’m unable to lift my youngest daughter and take care of my family’s most basic needs. And I’m going through huge hormonal changes due to the type of surgery I had. I’ve been so blue that I haven’t really been online a lot; I’ve been in survival mode, seriously just trying to heal so I can get back to my life. There is another reason I’ve been blue though, and it’s very hard for me to admit…I made the mistake of checking my book sales and well, let’s just say that my hiatus from the internet due to my depression has clearly impacted how many people are buying my book.I’m not sure how I even got here. My dream started as a child, I always wanted to be a writer for National Geographic, however, I quickly learned that to get a degree in journalism you have to be able to actually spell, which, I cannot. So as that dream died I found another dream, I wanted to write novels, I had started one ages ago that still to this day has never been finished. I’ve published one children’s novel and am almost finished writing the second book in the series, but I’m stuck and I’m not sure how to get out of it.
Here is my problem, I had tons of great feedback from the first book and then one day I received not so good feedback. It wasn’t mean or anything and I know the person was trying to be helpful, but since then I’ve had a block. How is it that one comment out of almost a hundred can ruin my mojo? Does this happen to everyone? Is it just me? Is it the fact that I’m a people pleaser? Seriously how has one semi- negative sentence impacted my life’s dream? Why have I allowed it to?
I wonder when I began measuring my success by how many people “liked” me on Facebook. I wonder when I started to allow this to dictate how and when and how well I write. It really bothers me that I’ve given away my power to a website and to other people’s opinions.
There was a time that I wrote because I loved it. I wrote knowing no one would ever read it, and it made me so happy. Recently though I’ve noticed that I’m writing for a different reason, not just to sell books, but to be “liked.” This just doesn’t sit well with me, I thought this part of my personality died after high school, at least I had hoped that it had.
Perhaps that is part of the problem, with Facebook, we are not only given an amazing reach to everyone on the planet, but also to everyone from our past that maybe we really just wanted to forget, to bury with the parts of ourselves that we grew out of. I went from not talking to anyone from my high school for almost ten years, to suddenly having almost everyone I’ve ever met riding in my pants pocket via my phone. Don’t get me wrong it’s great to be connected to everyone, but suddenly I noticed I’m becoming someone I’m not in order to be “liked.”
I had made a deal with myself months ago that I could only get on Facebook on the days that I spent time writing, I had a deadline for my second novel that has come and gone and I’m still finishing it up. The agreement with myself worked, I didn’t get online for days, sometimes weeks, because I had writer’s block. But sadly as I said earlier it seemed to have a direct impact on book sales, as using social media is a huge way of free advertising for a first time author. So now I’m not sure what to do; I want to sell books, but more importantly I want to write them. I should say I want to WANT to write them. I want to be connected to people, but I don’t want to be owned by whether or not people “like” me.
Most days I wonder what I’ve gotten myself into, I mean seriously can I really write an entire fifty book series for children? It just seems almost insurmountable. At this point it would be so easy to just give up and go back to being only a stay at home mom. I could quit the whole writing game, I could go back to doing chores during naptime rather than forcing myself to sit and try to write something that hopefully no one will respond negatively to. I could, I could so easily give up.
Being a woman today is kinda rough, really the whole woman’s movement, yes it is wonderful, but now we not only have careers and families and McMansions to tend to, but also these annoying goals! (I say that tongue in cheek, of course.) I’m not sure how to balance them all, I’m not sure how to cross them off my list, but maybe that’s my problem. Instead of crossing goals off my list- maybe I just need to enjoy my journey. Maybe I just write because I love to write, and maybe the next time someone gives me less than thrilling feedback I actually just take the advice rather than being paralyzed by it. Maybe.
So starting today my new goal is this, not to finish my next book just to “finish” it and get it on the shelf. Not to be “liked” on Facebook, or to sell a million copies, but to love what I do. And to show my daughters that having a dream is a wonderful thing, having goals isn’t just to make money or to become famous, it’s literally finding the missing pieces of my personal puzzle, those things, those moments, that only myself and God are in control of, that complete me.
And maybe just maybe along the way I might inspire someone else to follow their own dreams, hopefully even my own daughters…because let’s face it, no matter how many “likes” we get on Facebook or followers on Twitter, if we aren’t inspiring our own children, we may as well give up.
My oldest daughter and I have a deal that during naptime she does school work and I write, today she presented me with something I’ll treasure as long as I live. It’s five pages of preschool lined paper with drawings and letters scrawled on every inch, bound together with what appears to be a million staples. As she presented it to me, her smile was enormous…
“Look Mommy, I wrote a book, just like you!”
Now that’s better than a million “likes” any day.
{Tell us if there has been a time when you let being "liked" dictate how you live your life...if you're brave enough that is. One lucky commenter will win Shauna's book!}
Don't Forget to {Go Blue} for autism awareness month.. Check out these amazing mother warriors and do your part to spread awareness about autism this month!
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)