Just Jillian

Ok, so full confession:

I've loved Bob and Jillian since they started on The Biggest Loser.

Every season I would watch TBL and it would gradually get worse. But I would keep watching because... Bob and Jill! I love their personalities and while I workout I actually imagine them coaching me (obviously Bob cheering me and Jill swearing at me). Bob has kept me watching TBL, and I love this season with him as a coach AND host, then Jillian gets her own show and something just clicked inside my brain.

Jillian has two kids and a partner and this incredible career and while she's doing her podcast she mentions how she feels like she has 48 hours worth of stuff to fit into 24 hours a day, and that she is trying so hard to be a success and she feels like she is failing miserably, as a mother, as a supporting partner, in her business, etc...

Since I stopped teaching four and a half years ago, I have always had this horrible, nagging voice in the back of my mind, jeering me, asking me what I am going to do when this whole "stay at home mom" bit runs out and the kids are all in school. I hate that voice because while I have a few ideas floating around, I really truly don't know what I am going to do with myself in 5 years and that terrifies me.

Tonight while watching Jillian's show I realized, with an intense amount of gratitude, what a huge blessing that is, not knowing what my next career move is. Because if I did, then I would probably be working on it and that would be yet another thing to add to my extremely full and already overwhelming plate.

When I left teaching I knew I wanted to do something more impactful. Something that really mattered and helped change people's lives (and as much as I enjoyed teaching art to high schoolers, it just wasn't doing that for me enough to want to be away from raising my son). And while I don't know what that is yet, I do know that on a daily basis I am shaping the minds and characters and futures of four wonderful children, and for me for right now, that is enough. I am enough.

A good 20 minutes

When days like today happen, and nothing seems to go the way I think it should, (problems too long and boring to list) at least I can go to bed tonight thinking that for a solid 20 minutes today, I was a good mom who made a fort and played with my kids. And I will pray that I can just forget about everything else that happened today outside of that 20 minutes. The end.