Time to Begin

“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.”

Chinese Proverb

Welcome!

Thanks for joining me on this journey. Hopefully this is the start of a very real relationship and we’ll get to know each other very well along the way.

I’m Jus, and in the interest of full disclosure, I’m writing this from my couch as I watch a trashy Netflix movie while pretending that my to-do list is imaginary and that someone will throw themselves at me to help me do it anyway. Yeah, right!

What a great way to start a post that’s meant for motivation, right? Ha!

Well, I actually have a lot of reasons to not be motivated and to sit here and whinge. I have endometriosis, meaning that I haven’t been not tired since primary school. I have young children, and at least one of them (or perhaps even my husband) wakes me up a minimum of once every night. And I work.

But it’s not about that at all. Let me paint you a picture of where I’m at: You see, I grew up with what I see in hindsight as undiagnosed OCD. I won’t go into the specifics, but the signs were definitely there from a very young age. That translated into an irrational fear of lack of order as I got older. So much so, that even into my teens, I couldn’t handle anything being out of place. I would know if a sibling had been in my room, if something was slightly shifted sideways, and I would spend so much time straightening things, tidying and refolding my clothes if someone else had folded them “sub-par”.

Fast forward to adult life, and I had become a wife who followed her husband around putting everything away all day. I would demand and bark orders until someone helped me, and always complain about the job done. Every. Single. Time. I couldn’t bear the thought of something not put away, to the point that when family came to visit, they wanted to leave because I would stress so much about the perceived mess they were making.

So why am I telling you this? Because despite my extreme perfectionism and obsessive tendencies, there is housework to be done but right now, I’m sitting and resting. Looking at the autumn leaves falling from the vines outside is so therapeutic, and it got me thinking: how many of us actually stop when we need to? How many of us push through for fear of letting others down, whether it be parents, our partners and children, or friends?

Over the years, I’ve become more tired as time has gone on. I’ve gotten older, I’ve had two children, worked two jobs and in amongst all that, had multiple surgeries for endometriosis, which is an ongoing struggle causing fatigue, and with a very active toddler running around who is also a morning person (none of us are otherwise!), I have become very close to reaching burnout point more than once. And I’ve been overwhelmed to the point of getting nothing done as I stare at the housework building up in front of me. And I lost myself there for a while. My strive for perfection , my ambition to do great things, had all but disappeared amongst the overwhelm and exhaustion. And I felt defeated.

I’ve come a fair way since then; I’m not overwhelmed anymore, but I’m still so, so tired. And so I’m planting my tree. Like the vines outside that are bringing me peace and joy right now, perhaps if I let myself rest; if I give myself permission not to be perfect and not to have everything together all the time; perhaps I will find my motivation again and be able to see things through to the finish. Perhaps I will find myself again and in turn, have the strength to better invest into my relationships. I might even fold my laundry…