More to Me Than Mummy?

Recently, I've been feeling a bit brighter about life.

I've been 'coping' with being a Stay At Home Mum ("SAHM") helped by keeping my days busy. This week for example:

Monday - am: Callum is in nursery and went for a run (3.7miles this week!) then I cleaned (never enough time to do a whole house in 2 hours so half always remains unclean!!) before picking Callum up after lunch; pm: got the bus into Bournemouth for shopping and a play on the beach, walking back along the sea front in time for dinner

Tuesday - am: swimming; pm: wonder around Burley (small New Forrest village) then a couple of mop up cleaning jobs

Wednesday – Mum is over all day so will do a couple of mop up cleaning jobs, receive delivery of food shopping then head into town for a mooch. Hopefully, will squeeze in a run when mum arrives.

Thursday – Babysitting (well, he is a 12 year old boy, hardly a baby!!!) for my sister and getting an ooochy ouchy wax (say no more!)

Friday – Callum’s first full (after last week’s never happened) day at nursery when I will be putting my head down to study after a quick mum’s meet with some Twitter peops.

Writing it all down like that, there seems very little in there for Callum but we do something for him each day. Admittedly, more often it is the beach (its still a novelty) but sometimes it’ll  be the park, he enjoys playing with my niece, the visit to Burley today was for him so we could see some New Forest ponies. OK, so the ponies didn’t want to be seen today but we did see a couple of donkeys about 200 meters away. And, of course, the swimming this morning was for him – though I do enjoy it too.

But even keeping busy, and even though it sounds like I’m doing a lot for me, I still struggle mentally once in a while. Like today! I did enjoy swimming but then after swimming I just,well,couldn’t be bothered. I felt like saying “I’m booooorrreeeed” like I did as a grumpy teenager in the school summer holidays. I didn’t want to return home as I would have to clean and that was like my mum saying “well tidy your room if your bored”! But I didn’t want to do anything either. I’m spoilt, I live in a wonderful place but today I felt like I’d already exhausted a lot of it. I haven’t – there is so much I haven’t done or seen – but they are still the same ‘kind of things’ even if they are in different places. I’m feeling my rut closing in on me. I’m losing the will to want to look for work but am quietly panicking inside that this is it for the rest of my life and I wont be able to get back to doing the work I enjoy, have been building my experience up for, am becoming more qualified to do.

This ‘job in the pipeline’ is still there but I am waiting! Waiting for someone else to shout jump and I’m not good at waiting. Once someone has an idea, I like to take action immediately otherwise I start to get the fear that it’ll never happen…and often never does. I hate procrastinating.

But today, I am sure, is just a blip…tomorrow, next week, soon…I will be back fighting again, spurred on by a glimpse of a different future on a different day. There must be more to me than just being ‘Mummy’. Its probably just alcohol withdrawals – I had the wise (read crazy) idea to only drink alcohol at the weekend. Roll on Friday!