I have begun to look forward to Mondays. Truly. It took me two months to get into 2017, but finally, this month I have set aside Mondays for me, ME and only me for the hours that my lovely daughters are in school.
My passion other than my family is writing, but since the start of 2017, I have not sat down to write, to really write, until now. I can tell you ten million things that came up in January and February and state a million excuses as to why I didn’t write, but the truth is simple. I did not make the time. Now I am making Mondays my writing days, my ME days. I am actually marking them in my calendar and making them happen.
Could I write more than one day? Maybe, but I want to have a realistic goal. Sometimes life happens, kids get sick, duties call, so I am starting with one day. One day out of seven for me. And it’s really not even a day, it’s just six hours, six hours out of one hundred and sixty-eight hours in a week. And HAH! Even only a week into my plan I found out that even that one day/six hours sometimes will get interrupted! Last Monday I got the opportunity to go on a school field trip with one of my daughters which rarely happens, so I moved my writing day to Tuesday. I think the universe was testing my commitment to myself, but I passed the test! I spent a great day with my daughter on Monday and wrote on Tuesday.
Some may say why not just skip the field trip? But times like those with my daughters are what I cherish the very most. Times like those are few and far between so if something comes up with my children, I will embrace it every time and not cancel my writing day but I will make sure to replace that day with another day IN THE SAME WEEK!
And as I have been working on this goal for myself just in this short time, I have realized something funny. I have realized that what I have always done for my children, I am now also doing for myself! I have always made time for any and all things important to my children, but I have not always done that for me. That’s changing this month. I will now find the time, save it, devote myself to it. Devote myself to ME. One day (6 hours) a week.
And in just these past couple weeks of saving a day for me I have also realized that when I make this time for myself I accomplish more. I slow down. I enjoy each day and I actually get more done! I wrote earlier this year about not being so hard on myself to get the to do list done daily and what I have now learned is that when I have the ME day, the to-do list actually gets easier, is more enjoyable and gets done faster!
I think whether we are working moms, moms taking time off, moms-to-be or whatever our situation is, it is up to us to make the time for us. Weekday, weeknight, weekend, it doesn’t matter, as long as we have ME time to do something we love to do because the rest of the time we are usually taking care of someone else, doing something for someone else or running an errand for someone else.
So I now have Me Mondays and am loving them. When’s your ME time? I’d love to hear about it. Please feel free to share it here….