Tag Archives: self care

Even A Badass Needs a Nap

Yes, I am calling myself a badass. Look at that badass messy desk.

I woke up at 8:06 this morning.

We leave for school at 8:05.

I know what you’re thinking, what happened to getting up at 5:30 to get your word count in? I thought that was a thing you were doing.

It is, and I am. A week and a half in, getting up that early every day still isn’t easy, but I love the quiet and the freedom it gives me for the rest of my day when I’m not stressing when and how I’m going to cram in the rest of my words.

But today?

Today Rufus happened.

Rufus has started sleeping through the night–mostly. Sometimes he gets up at 3:30 am and won’t go back to sleep. Then I get up and get all of my early morning things accomplished extra early, but by the time we get through the school day and I spend a few hours on my feet at work, I go from a badass writer mom who does it all to a spitting mad badass you don’t want to mess with.

And then Rufus wants to get up at the same the next morning, and I have to tell you, I do not do so well on four hours of sleep or less. So this morning, when Rufus woke up and I was able to get him to go back to sleep, I fell asleep right along with him.

When my alarm went off, I shut that sucker down and kept right on snoozin.

Then of course, I panicked when I realized exactly how long I’d slept and the whole day was thrown outta whack.

But you know what? I’m not sorry.

My sore, overworked body needed those couple hours of extra sleep, and so did my husband. So did Rufus. Sure, Felix was five minutes late for school, but we got there right as they were serving breakfast, so it was a win all the way around.

Have I fit my word count in yet? No.

Maybe I won’t today.

And I’m OK with that.

I gave myself a break today, because obviously my body needed rest. Instead of writing, I knit at my desk while I watched some author business related videos I’ve been saving up. Those were way scarier than not hitting my word count.

And even of you are badass, it’s OK to give yourself a break when you do big and scary things.

I’ll be back at it tomorrow, plugging away at the keyboard as well as making my terrible and great plans for world book domination.

Stay tuned, and don’t push yourself too hard. Even badasses need a nap now and then.

 

 

In Case I Didn’t Mention it, The Last Few Months Have Been Hard

Yesterday I did something out of the ordinary. I took some time off.

I have a history of trying to work something productive into every moment of everyday. I am constantly cooking or tidying (not that you’d notice), writing, reading, knitting, etc. I don’t sit still very well. It’s part of the reason yoga is such an important part of my day. It’s the only time I try to decompress, and most days, I don’t do that very well.

Since Felix was born, and especially since we had Rufus, I haven’t been away from my kids (outside of work) for more than a couple of hours at a time. Mostly, I didn’t want to be. I like my kids, and I don’t like interrupting their routine, but since January, when I became a stay-at-home mom, I have been with my kids All. The. Time. And I needed a break. So did Brock.

Anniversary celebrations well under way. 4 years with @hashtagphysics. ????

A post shared by Marla Dawn Holt (@tinydinostudios) on

For our fourth anniversary, Brock and I made it happen. We left the kids at home with grandma went out. We drank our coffee hot, we ate too much Indian food, we saw a movie. Then, after all of that, instead of going home and putting the kids to bed, we went to a hotel for a little peace and quiet.

At our first movie since Rufus was born. We'll be seeing Wonder Woman.

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It might have been too quiet. We’re used to the hubbub of 2.5 boys and the near constant sounds of traffic and sirens and neighbors. And even though this hotel is probably less than two miles from our house, there was none of that. The suite was a cocoon of silence and privacy. I have had a baby living in my bedroom for the last three years, I don’t get a lot of privacy. I was so out of my element, I was unnerved enough to dig out my white noise app and think about turning on a thunderstorm just to have something to listen to–because apparently the music we had playing wasn’t enough for me.

Our home for the night has three rooms. And a hot tub. Because this is the first night we've ever spent away together. Ever.

A post shared by Marla Dawn Holt (@tinydinostudios) on

While the quiet was surreal, having an evening with my husband without a baby waking up in the middle of the movie and then again just as we’re going to bed was just as magically restorative as I wanted it to be.

Helping Felix make the transition to starting pre-school no longer feels so daunting, even though it means establishing a new daily routine for everyone, and dealing with some intense three year-old emotions. And there are other things I have been putting off (writing synopses, querying agents, finishing drafts, etc.) that don’t seem so scary today as they did yesterday, even though yesterday they felt a helluva lot more doable than they did six months ago.

I want to hang onto this feeling. I want to capture this sense of renewal and invigoration and seal it into capsule somewhere inside me where I can open it up whenever I feel bogged down by endless to-do lists, or when the baby wakes up an hour after I finally got to sleep, or when I have to be an extrovert at my service industry job and all I want to do is sit in a corner and read a book.

I know I can’t. But I can be better about taking care of myself. When I feel peaceful, it’s better for my family, it’s better for my writing.

Even though Felix’s school doesn’t start for two more weeks, tomorrow morning we’re all getting up early so we can practice getting out of the house by 8. That means my alarm goes off at 5:45. Despite opening the coffee shop for years, I am still not good at getting up in the morning. But I am getting up this early so I have time to do yoga. Because if I take care of myself first, maybe I can maintain a little bit of this energy.