Living the dream is off to a slow start

Since I finished University and entered the workforce in 1999 my life has been about one deadline, event, project or function after another.  I have been involved in coordinating, promoting, attending and completing more community events and projects, big and small, than I care to remember.  Then once we decided to become parents back in 2005 there has been a lot of planning, organising, heartbreak and celebrating tied up in that process, which for us has been an eight year journey to get two beautiful children.

After many months I have finally made the decision to be a full-time Mum with no part-time jobs on the side.  I want to be fully present with my children and husband, I want us to have the time and energy to realise our dreams of living lightly, trying to produce our own food, not creating so much waste, setting faith and family as our priorities every day and not getting caught up in consumerism/materialism.  Sounds great but it is proving much more challenging than I thought.

I thought my life would look like the pictures out of an Australian Country Style magazine, but not yet.  Since making this decision my body feels like it is shutting down. I am having a whole range of strange symptoms including fatigue, conjunctivitis, blocked ears, head colds, body aches and I think my body is physically realigning to the fact that I have no deadline in my head, no to-do list, there is no plan for the first time in a long time.  I think I may have over-relied on my Catecholamine hormones (these regulate stress responses and includes adrenaline) and now my body has to start functioning without them.  I have no medical training but this theory sounds good to me.

 

To make it worse our home life has not become miraculously more organised since making this commitment.  There is still a massive amount of washing to be folded and packed away, the floors need vacuuming and mopping and I have not embarked on my juicing, bread making and homemade baking as I desire.  Life is pretty much the same as before I just have absolutely no money and feel more tired than ever before.  I’m not sure this was the plan.

 

Anyway, despite the immediate shortcomings of my plan I am determined to continue with the experiment, I hope I have made the right decision, and even if it takes 20 years to reap the rewards, if there are any rewards to reap, I hope I have the courage and conviction to try and live my life the way I feel I have been created to live it.  Wish me luck.