Ruts v. Routines

We all have normal routines we do. Up in the morning, dress for work, get the kids up and ready for school, go to work etc. Eventually though those everyday routines turn into ruts and then you get bored, frustrated and snippy or at least I do. 

I hate the feeling of being in a rut. It grates on my nerves and I never seem to be able to just see iI'm in a rut and just change things up a bit. Instead I keep the pattern and get mad about it.

That is all changing now. Now that I know the signs of "rutting" I'm going to start doing things to stop it before it gets out of hand. Like tomorrow I am going to add a workout routine of some sort to my day to shake it up. 

Kinda feeling better already.

Road to finding me

We all tend to lose some of what makes us, well us.  I feel like I lost all of me most days being caught up in the 2 major roles of my life; mom and wife. 

We all had those things we liked to do and the causes we would do anything to support. For me it was reading, writing here, NF awareness, setting up charity events for NF and anything military/vet related. 

I started reading again about a year ago, started writing on here again this week, adopted a soldier this month and am thinking how I can get reinvolved in some other things.

Don't get me wrong I love my kids and family more than life itself but we all need things to do outside of them, otherwise eventually you'll just get lost, which is where I'm at.

Roles

We all have our roles to play in life. I've been Mom for 12 years, which is the most important and also challenging role. I've been wife for almost 5 years the other important role and one I usually mess up. Then there's the role you play at work, for the past 6 years for me that was nurse; now I'm not sure.

Other roles I have: daughter (messed up on that a few times as well), friend (I'm there when they need me but I have the worst response times when it comes to texting), musician (I play violin, actually reteaching myself after a very long time of not playing).

Amidst all these things I feel lost. I'm not sure what makes me well me anymore. I have ideas of what I like and would like to do but I don't feel like me. It's hard to explain and even harder to put into words. I'm just...lost.

Life plans....

Anyone else make a plan for their life only to have it fall apart and have to alter it to fit? That's where I'm at once again at the age of 33. My original life plan fell apart at age 19 and I had to start over again, since I was 12 I knew I was going into the military and I was going to retire at the age of 37 after doing my 20 years of service. I joined the Army, was in when 9/11 happened (stationed in VA) but had tore up my shoulder so I ended up being medboarded at age 19 after only 2 years of active service (4 years altogether because of DEP).

So at 19 I came home and redid it. I didn't plan on being pregnant barely a year later. During this time I readjusted. None of my Army skills seemed to translate into civilian life so I got a job as a waitress and then as a stocker at a grocery store (where I would meet my daughters sperm donor). At 20 I had my daughter and when she was 6 weeks old left her father who has had nothing to do with her since she was 2 and she's about to be 13 in June. When she was 6 months old I was told she had neurofibromatosis type 2 (at 9 after a trip to the NF clinic in Boston found she was misdiagnosed and actually had Neurofibromatosis Type 1). At this point I was still waitressing and bartending while my dad would babysit for me and my daughter basically lived with him because of all the hours I needed to work to pay bills. After I was in a car accident that nearly took my life 3 times and left me with a fractured neck,broken L1-L5 and a damaged liver among other things me and my dad had a long discussion about my life plan as I was sinking doing wht I was doing. There are other things that happened during these 3 years but I'm not going into detail on everything.

Fast forward a few years and in 2008 I moved up to NY to be near my family and forge a new relationship with my mom (that relationship is still going good today). I got a job as a CNA at a nursing home (yeah I got my CNA license as part of that redone life plan discussion with my dad)  and met my now husband there. Him and my dad encourged me to go to the LPN program and further my life plan that way. So I started the program in 2009 and graduated in 2010 7 weeks after having our first son. We got married in 2011 and moved back down to SC in 2013 (yes I'm skipping some things).

Fast forward to now and why I'm redoing my life plan. I've been a nurse for almost 6 years and never had any doubts about my abilities or skills as a nurse, that is until my current  employer instilled those doubts in me. Now I'm sending out my resume to other healthcare jobs but also looking into other avenues as I'm having doubts about myself so i think I might have to redo my plan in order to make it work and be able to support my family, afterall we did add that third and final child (a boy :-) ) in March 2014. 

its been awhile....

I know I've been gone for a really long time and I'm now basically having to start all over, which is fine because I started doing this for me anyways. A lot has changed since I was last on here and I'm not going to go into all those details. I will say that all my posts after this will be daily and I welcome any and all feedback from anyone who may stumble across my little blog and take a notion to read it.