This is your reminder to look for gratitude in the monotony.
I absolutely LOVE routine. I come by it honestly; my father was highly disciplined, and it was a significant part of my childhood. It also provides a modicum of comfort to know how to structure my days trying to juggle several different roles. So naturally, I relish the routine and structure necessary for raising a child and maintaining a household.
Feedings every three hours? Check.
Pumping on a schedule? Check, check.
Grocery orders every weekend? Done.
I am so predictable that my friends know my plans for each weekend LOL (“You’ve gotta go get your grocery pick up order, don’t you?”). As Samuel grows and develops into toddlerhood, routines are more necessary than ever. I wake up at 6:30 am, get Samuel dressed and ready for daycare, and then the work day begins for me. 14-15 patients later, it’s time for the 5-9 shift: dinner, baths, a little play/quality time with the family, then bed. Rinse and repeat.
Recently, I found myself, for lack of a better way to phrase it, burdened and almost bored with the repetition of just daily life. As social media does, it read my mind and energy, and I saw a reel on Instagram about finding gratitude in a boring home life. It was just what I needed to see.
We hear ad nauseam about the benefits of practicing daily gratitude. I often talk to my parents and patients in the clinic about the need for consistent practice with this. When this practice is implemented, it utilizes a different part of our brains to disrupt negative thoughts and emotions. Especially in the times we are currently in, finding gratitude day to day is highly challenging. I say all this to say that, even though I am very aware of the benefits of this, I found myself falling victim to feeling burdened with the daily routines of parenting Samuel and maintaining our home effectively. After seeing the IG mentioned above reel, I realized what a privilege it is to have what seems like dull, monotonous tasks day in and day out. Not everyone is afforded the privilege of what appears to be boring but is consistency. What a blessing to be annoyed with laundry when the true blessing is being able to have clothing for our families and clean this clothing regularly. Luckily, the day-to-day is “boring” because that means we aren’t in times of high chaos and uncertainty. Again, this is not something that we can say all the time. Talk about a necessary perspective shift.
So, I’m sharing my thoughts because I know you’ve been here too. You may even be here now. You’ve likely heard of this recent phenomenon about shifting our thoughts from “I have to” to “I get to?” Yeah, it’s annoying, but it works.
So today, I’m grateful for the peace of consistency. When I’m bored with making grocery lists, I’m shifting my thoughts to be thankful that I can afford food for our family. I don’t know; it all seems so simple but so challenging at the same time. And I’m going to tell you now that I will not stop being annoyed with many things, LOL. I’m just trying to find those daily glimmers. If, in the exhaustion of it all, we see one thing we are grateful for daily in the trenches of adulting and parenting, we are truly doing well.
