Rearranging Priorities
What's the difference between rearranging priorities and quitting? At the moment, they feel the same to me. After I stopped instucting classes through the online studio that I worked for, I quickly created this blog as a way for me to connect with people--also, my website name is too perfect to give up. I watched a video that said to blog about anything that seemed interesting to me, once a week, for the next two years, and see how that improved my business.
At the time that I created this blog, posting every week seemed like a very do-able task. I had a lot of time on my hands and a lot of information swirling around in my brain. Then, my life got BUSY!
I had just made the promise to myself to say "yes" to the things that both excited and scared me. So, when Caleb came home from one of his band practices, and asked me to try being the back-up singer in his band, I said, "yes." Then, I realized how much it would benefit me to get music lessons, and I started trading yoga lessons for music lessons. Adding more excitement at the same time, I still felt the need to pull in more income for our family.
I was hoping to create income from the training that I already had. I did not want to pay to go to school anymore. While sitting into a meditation one day, the thought came to me that if I could get paid to go back to college, then I would. That same day, Caleb came home and said, "Heather, NMSU is paying people to get their certificate to become a teacher in Special Education." It was a lot of money, and it felt like it was meant to be. In 2004, I had enrolled in college to become a teacher, but Louisiana just didn't treat it's teachers well, and I switched degrees.
Therefore, I am now in an intense advanced residency program with a very full course load, while student teaching full time, and I am a member in a band that I have had to learn all the songs for because they sing 60s and 70s Rock and I listen to old time Country, I'm teaching yoga classes and receiving music lessons on the side, I'm a mom and spouse, and I'm weighed down with the thought of putting out weekly blogs.
I haven't been putting out my weekly blogs. I've got all the thoughts floating around in my head about all the things I'd like to share with people, but it was just too much. I didn't want to quit, though. Yuck! Quitting leaves a nasty taste in my mouth. I think it's because I really work to connect with my intuition before making decisions, and if I decide to commit to something, then I know that it's for my own good, and I know I need to push through the difficulties to get to the other side.
What I wonder about is which part of my thoughts is committment and which part of my thoughts is sheer stubborness? That's the question that has been floating around each time I go to sit into meditation. It's a big enough question that I felt prompted to believe that some of you may be going through something like this--that you've set goals for yourself, but, suddenly, things just got very overwhelming. How do we find balance in attaining those goals and maintaining sanity at the same time?
For me, I'm not going to stop being a mom, I'm not going to stop being a spouse, I'm a really good yoga teacher and teaching it to others actually brings healing into my life. Singing and listening to music, and breaking down those walls of resistance and fear, is healing to me (did I forget to mention that I also have discovered that I have a 10mm thyroid nodule that I'm working on healing at the same time as I've started all these other things?) so I'm not going to stop that. At the moment, and at least for the next three and a half years, going through this process of being a teacher for Special Education feels like a calling to me. Also, as I write this blog, it feels very peaceful to pour out my thoughts and get rid of them.
So, to me, I see balance forming by deciding to set a goal of writing a monthly blog. This website has a nice feature that I can write the blog and schedule it to be released as far into the future as I want it to be. If I get the time to put out more blogs, then I'll shift it into a bi-monthly release, and add more as I am able to do so. There. I can already feel a bit of release of tension off my shoulders by rearranging my priorities and still not quitting.