Don’t call it a comeback… I’ve been here for years
Hello!
While it looks like I may have abandoned blogging and moved on to the next shiny thing, that’s simply not true. I took the summer off to hang out with my kids, do summer things, help my husband through a job loss, and take care of myself through it so I could take care of everyone else.
I needed to step back from this project to avoid overwhelm, and sometimes, we have to scale back when things aren’t completely normal. This is completely okay!
So, the first Monday after school was out for the summer, we learned that my husband’s company did a major scale back and he, unfortunately, was a part of it. This happens in this industry (software development) and has happened to us twice before, but we could see those times coming. This was a complete surprise.
Yet, we were able to jump into action. We decided to look at it this way – he gets a little vacation, we could establish the summer routine to include him more, and his only job was to relax and look for a job a few hours a day. Of course, he did go through some grief because he really enjoyed his time at this place. So I encouraged him to feel through that, and we prioritized relaxing summer activities:
Gardening
Painting
and hanging out with the kiddos, swimming, watching movies, doing projects, and relaxing.
By the end of the summer? We had two happy kids ready to go back to school — My daughter said it was one of the best summers she ever had — and my husband was offered a new position just in time to start the new school routine!
Also, I was not completely burnt out! Scaling back on a few projects helped me to be able to take care of my needs, while also juggling the needs of my family and I am so glad I did it. It was a really fun summer.
This summer taught us all a lot about perspective and mindset. You can choose how you react to the unexpected. We chose hope, gratitude, and resourcefulness. We never felt like we were lacked anything because we made a plan, and made do with all the abundance we already had.