The Struggles and The Good Stuff

Ok, time for a little journal/writing exercise. This kind of stuff helps me get back into my groove, and sometimes the act of writing helps makes sense of things and ends up being quasi therapeutic.

It’s the 5 vs. 5 – Five things I’m loving at this very moment, and five things I’m struggling with. I always say gotta share the good and the bad on here, or in this case the fun stuff and the not so fun stuff. But working through the not so fun stuff ends up making you grow, which is, you know, a rather beneficial thing to do.

I’ll try to keep it short. And keeping each to five is a challenge. But so are attention spans. 

Five things I’m loving:

1: My pup, Kili, I don’t write about her enough. She’ s always by my side, and has been the most consistent loving thing in the past 6 (almost 7) years of my life. We’re best buds, but I think my emotional attachment to her can drive her nuts at times. I’m working on it.

2: My marriage: I don’t like to talk about it too much, but I am just so grateful my husband and I met and started dating before social media and technology took over.

3: The simple things with my son: Reading books, walks, talks, cuddles, superheroes, Legos, so many Legos, and watching him learn and grow into his own unique self. Ohh and his imagination. It’s such a blast and blessing to be around.

4: My job: I couldn’t predict my current occupation of an artist, blogger (sorry I cringe at the word influencer) author, designer, mom and seriously domestically challenged wife, but I thank God every day for how it’s worked out.

5: Travels: What can I say, I love to travel, and this has been a pretty full few months to just sit back and thin about (Sayulita travel guide coming soon. Promise). Ok, and I watched season 2 of Succession twice because of them. And am fully hooked on that show now. Wow.

Ok, that was easy…

Five things I’m struggling with:

1: Self-doubt: It’s crippling at the very moment. I basically tell myself the worst things you could tell yourself: Example: No one cares, why bother, it’s not good enough, this sucks and you should be doing so much better…you know, the usual uplifting pump up speeches between the ears.  FUN TIMES. I’m working on it but my inner voice is a total ass hole right now.

2: I hate my phone. I literally loathe it, yet my job somewhat relies on it. Ok, I absolutely love the camera and have dozens of unposted pics I cherish on it, but I just see the darn phone as the root of so many problems and I get nauseous when I think of how many minutes I’ve wasted staring at the darn thing and how much I pick apart my appearance because of another word I loathe: selfies. I just have a love-hate relationship with technology these days. The good news is, I think a lot of us do. I hope. I do still like my laptop though. Maybe I just need to take pics on my real camera and focus on blog posts for a while. Hmmm…

3: This is the most I’ve been sick in as far back as I remember. Even during college when I was surviving on Diet Coke, Diet Mountain Dew, Cottage cheese, Baked Lays, waaaay too much alcohol and Jimmy Johns. How I survived, I still don’t know. Yet here I am at 39, Eating super healthy, working out regularly, *trying to get sleep, drinking water, taking my go-to supplements…and over the past year, I just keep on getting sick. It’s frustrating as hell. I think it might have something to do with lack of sleep (*trying = 4-5 hours a night. I got 8 hours a few nights in Hawaii and felt like a new person) being a mom to a four-year-old, and the whole Self Doubt isn’t helping at all. It’s. All. Connected.

4: Trying to Keep up: I don’t know what I’m even trying to keep up with these days, but I’ve given up trying to keep up,  but still try to keep up with some elusive Lost City of Successlantis I’ve made up in my head or something. I have no clue what my goal is, I just keep on grinding and creating and living, hoping Vanity Fair will call one day offering me an interview and four-page article shot by Annie Leibowitz, or I’ll just somehow magically land back living at the beach. I’m thinking I really need to set actual goals for once, but then the self-doubt kicks in and I tell myself, why bother. See the cycle? It’s exhausting.

5: Guilt: Mom guilt (so many different facets here, folks), sleep guilt (nights I go to sleep instead of work), work guilt, un-replied email guilt, family guilt, missed a workout guilt, oh crap I was just a beeyotch to my husband guilt, puppy guilt (Kili is sooo good at dishing it out), faith guilt (can’t remember the last time I read a devotional or cracked open my bible, thank the Lord we have an amazing church though, and Jesus loves me no matter WHAT) ….overthinking too much stuff guilt. It’s such a weird word, guilt. And it feels weird admitting I’m guilty of feeling guilty for not being perfect. Oh man, that was hard to admit. But maybe it’s worse to think you’re doing great in all aspects of everything, and the guilt is just knowing I can always improve and be a better person. I can also maybe one day learn to give myself some grace.

Which I’m working on. Gonna shoot that a-hole inner voice of mine the memo.

Five vs. Five.

Hopefully, something in there is relateable, because that was therapeutic to write. And yes, a bit nerve-wracking to post.

I could’ve had it be The 15 vs 15, but then that’d pretty much be a book. Which I’ve talked myself out of doing for the past few years.

La vie est belle. Looking back it all makes sense, but at the present sometimes you just gotta stop, breathe, have an attitude of gratitude, but also just write stuff out.

Picture up top = something I talked myself out of posting last night because I said it wasn’t good enough (insert facepalm emoji here). Figured it’d be a solid fit for this post. Always keep on chasing those rainbows, darling. Whatever those rainbows may be.