A couple of times a year I catch the slow paced life bug. It often comes from something I experienced. Currently, it was being on vacation. But in the past it has also been because of a fight with my husband, getting sick, or because of something emotional. Being on vacation is much more glamorous than some of the other sources! I feel thankful.
When we go on vacation I get to spend a ton of time with my husband. I am not on the computer and he doesn't have the stress of work. We are just together experiencing whatever is to be experienced in front of us.
I love to visit new places but really, I love to get away and play.
The thing is that I can experience getting away and "playing" even here at home. I am pretty nostalgic about our first few years of marriage. I was finally a housewife...it was before we had internet in our home and I was yet to have a smart phone. I got to live a little fairytale I had come up with in my head about being married. And it was wonderful.
But everyday life cannot always be a fairytale so life eventually caught up with me. I still feel pretty blessed about how I get to spend my days but it is definitely filled with more stress and pressures that I put on myself.
I hit my six year blog anniversary this month and as I think back to my first years of blogging (which were also the first years of our marriage) I cannot help but be nostalgic about those slower fairytale years. I wish I could go back in time to relive it all. But when in reality, not much has changed in my life since then besides things I have chosen to take on. I do not work outside of the home anymore. I watch my nephew, but at twice a week, I still get more done being at home with him than I would substitute teaching. My husband has the same job. We live in the same home.
What I have realized is that the thing that has changed in these past few years is my to do list. In order to be more in this blog world I have had to do more. In order to keep up I have fallen into the trap of busy social media that never sleeps. I am old enough now to be able to see our world is changing. Keeping up sometimes makes me feel like I am losing myself.
This blog has had such a huge impact on my role as a wife and a woman. It helped me to embrace my role as a homemaker and it is something I am so grateful for. But at the same time, as I started getting recognition for my voice and my styling, blogging became a job because I wanted to keep up.
What once was me seeking support from the outside world has actually become the opposite. I found refuge and community through blogging that there were women who valued what I do. I fought outside comments about what I did all day and assumptions that I just spent all of my husband's money.
But as time has gone by and blogging has changed, blogging has now become the new pressure in my life. My value now is being seen in my pageviews, how much money I make, and what big business recently featured my work.
So as I come back from vacation, I realize that I want my value to come from somewhere else. I am reminded in my time with Brent and that I want my priority to be more on him. I see my home and I want to really be in it. Not just sitting in my office.
I want to create and inspire others because I want to. Not to meet a sponsored deadline or to get more pins on Pinterest. I want to embrace the homemaker that I have been these last five years and stay true to the voice that I feel called to be.
My husband, my home, and our slow paced life is my priority. I want that to be enough. I do not need the pat on the back that blogging brings. Instead I want to share my life through my heart for those who need to hear it. But not at the expense of being true to who I am.
