Strange sanity savers
I’m a crazy mum. I think everyone can relate to feeling like a crazy mum. We all have our quirks to help us manage. Strange little preferences and rituals that help get us through the daily grind. What I’ve learned about myself in recent years is how I attempt to feel ‘in control’ of something, anything! If I’m feeling like I’m floating without a grasp of anything, it’s usually something totally unrelated that makes me feel better. Crazy mum, I know.
"I'm so tired! What could possibly make me feel better?"
Rearranging furniture
For some reason rearranging furniture or re-sorting clutter makes me feel like I’m in control of my life and not a sleep deprived product of my children’s needs. I love it, I seriously do love it. Although it really doesn’t make any sense. Nothing changes, aside from a ‘fresh’ looking environment with perhaps a smidge more organisation than was there previously.
Those who know me will agree with me when I say “I’m a hoarder with order”, a title I lovingly gave myself for my love of organisation and inability to throw things out. I’m not the only person like this… Many people I know are either aware that they do the same thing or still in the closet, and many of them also come from teaching backgrounds. The profession teaches us to be resourceful (although I know we all wish we had more money so we didn’t have to save little pieces of everything ‘just in case’ it comes in handy). It also teaches us to be VERY organised. It’s hard to manage a room full of little (or big) ‘angels’ if you don’t have your systems and ‘stuff’ well organised. It might make me seem more crazy, but it actually reduces the level of crazy mummy.
"I feel like I have too much to do!"
Find something to do that's not on the list
So what do I do? Give myself more things to do. Yep, makes perfect sense 😉
I consider what I need to do and then I look around my house and decide to clean (it always needs to be cleaned even after I’ve just cleaned it so this is a very effective procrastination tool in my world). The issue is, I might start with one particular job or in one room… within minutes I’m working on 3-5 jobs at once, holding up to 10 items all destined for different places. By the time I’ve finished putting away the items in my hands I’ve forgotten what I started doing, so I move onto something else. Somehow, magically, I manage to clean my space and instantly feel like I’m in control of everything. Like I am the boss of my space, I own it! When my environment is chaotic I feel like a crazy mummy. I need to act crazy to find sanity, go figure.
"Jobs are done, I can relax now"
Or... I could write a new list...
Thanks brain, I really needed that. I sit down, feeling chuffed and proud of my awesome efforts. My brain then seems to kick up a notch. Oh no, I’m making ‘to-do’ lists in my head and evaluating my level of crazy while I’m doing it. Why can’t I just enjoy some quite time? It’s like… I have an inability to sit still. The morning chaos and school routine forces the adrenaline through my body, and now I have to ‘do! do! do!’. As I sit on my lounge in my clean house coming up with brilliant ideas, I realise I need to write, draw or make them to satisfy my brain itch. Then out comes a to do list. It comes out in a sudden burst of false productivity, making me feel like I’m being totally awesome. I then look at my list, and realise that some of the tasks on my list are much harder and time consuming than I first thought. It’s ok, these are the ones I’ll tackle tomorrow, or on the weekend, or next week… pfft, I’ll get to them when I get to them.
This is why I coined it a ‘false sense of productivity’, and as I complete and cross off the easy items from my list… I feel like the master of my universe.
The crazy doesn't just last a day...
What happens next? The mad arvo and dinner time/bed time rush. Sometimes I don’t feel like I’ll make it through this part of the day, actually I lie… almost every day I don’t feel like I’ll make it out alive, but I do. Albeit with a HUGE exhausted sigh and slump. Feeling totally exhausted and wanting to sleep, I prepare myself to enter the land of slumber. At this point I feel like I could fall asleep the second I lay down. Even after the 32 years of knowing myself, I still have the illusion that I might just fall asleep as soon as my head hits that pillow. What actually happens? The eyes close and the brain decides it’s time to start planning, plotting and scheming once again. As I review the day, week, month and project into tomorrow, next week, next month, next year, when I’m 80… I’m ever so quietly trying to tell myself to shut up and go to sleep. “I’m tired, go to sleep.” I often even dream that I haven’t yet fallen asleep and think I’m still trying to work everything out. Sometimes my ideas are so brilliant at this time of day, I need to get up and make a new list… noting all the important information that my brain has just conjured. I’m sure that’s normal for every crazy mummy! *Cue crazy laugh
A sense of normality
I always find it entertaining how what makes us feel crazy, unusual, weird or strange is actually the most normal of our thoughts, feelings and experiences. I’m not the only parent that does things like this, to feel like I grasp my world. This is why I share. High fives to all us crazy normals out there! I just need to ask… If everyone’s crazy, does that make us normal? Crazy is the new normal people, embrace it!
Peace out, mummies xx
