Last night, as I wrote in my last post, I was away from home. I was in a hotel, a quiet room and nice comfy sheets. I was looking forward to getting a full night’s sleep. Wrong. I slept horribly, mostly because I had these super bizarre dreams, which I will now share with you.
I kept having a dream that we were running late. My sister-in-law and I were in Indiana for a conference and we had to be up and at ’em at a decent time. We were relying on the alarm on my brand new phone, so maybe that was a source of some stress, but all I know is I woke up countless times to reassure myself it wasn’t 7 a.m. and time to get up.
Then I had a super weird dream. My husband and I were on a cruise and for some reason, I got off the boat, ran around one of the islands and then got back on the boat, all while my husband watched. Then, our dog, who was on the cruise with us for some weird reason, jumped off the boat and I had to chase him in the water. He swims fast and I was struggling to keep up. I got back on the boat and we had to call someone on shore to tell them that the dog was coming there. We had to give a secret code to the operator to place the call. Apparently the password was the maiden name of one of my current coworker’s mother. Really? I had no idea what that could be so I swam off the boat to the island, where my coworkers were at and asked her the name. On the way back, I was just so exhausted. Once I got on the boat, I just stopped caring and really didn’t want to deal with anymore, but then I started to feel guilty. I woke up out of exhaustion.
At first I had no idea what that meant, but after I sat down and thought about it. Maybe I’m just tired. I have a ton on my plate. It’s probably more than I ever thought I could handle. There are people who help me out when I need help, but I’m starting to feel guilty relying on them so that I can have moments to myself to just breath, or in the case of this dream, maybe my mind is just telling me to take a little time to relax.
I just need to find the best way for me to do that on a more regular basis. I need to recharge my mental batteries. Maybe that’s a yoga class. Maybe it’s just sitting at a coffee shop and writing, but there has to be a way. There has to be a way for me to be wife, mommy, employee, volunteer and ME.
How does it work for you guys? How do you recharge? What about your other half? How do you support what they want to do? How do you emphasize when you need to recharge? If you have a family, how do you juggle that? I want thoughts and opinions.