Missing : a sense of direction

After completing my 12 days of Buffy challenge on Monday, I treated myself to a day off from my blog yesterday and...I felt lost! This really surprised me, as it's not like I don't have anything else to do each day. There's the boys to keep clean, fed, watered and entertained; the house to keep tidy; the dog to walk; and Christmas to prepare for.

Here are some of the highlights of a normal day in my house:

• Drag myself out of bed in the morning after the joy of the baby waking up 2 hourly throughout the night
• Try and fail to have a hot cup of tea
• Get all the basic jobs done (clean the kitchen, hoover, at least 1 load of laundry)
• Deal with the many and varied requests from the toddler and baby
• Breathe a sigh of relief when the toddler has his lunchtime nap and if I've got the timing right, take the baby to bed at the same time so we can both have some more sleep
• Berate myself for failing to devise some innovative and educational way of entertaining the boys/for not taking them out (thus also leading to me berating myself for not walking the dog)/for being quite comatose due to a distinct lack of sleep
• Deal with the inevitable pre-bedtime "excitement"
• Collapse in a stupor in front of the tv once the boys are in bed. Well, I say in bed but the baby's not at that stage yet so my evening's are still spent with one child attached to me
• Try to remind myself that as long as the boys are fed, watered, clean and happy I've done a good job and it's unreasonable to expect myself to be some kind of all-singing all-dancing amazing collectors edition of a mum, especially when the baby's so little
• Get up and do it all again the next day, and the next...
 

Without the focus that the challenge gave me, I achieved nothing but the very, and I mean very, bare minimum yesterday *whispers* and today.

Now whilst there are most definitely times when days like that are needed for our own mental and physical wellbeing, yesterday wasn't one of them. Instead, I was left feeling that my lack of focus prevented me from achieving my normal 'what I'm doing is good enough' mantra and this is most definitely bad.

It seems if I have a "just for myself" goal in a day then I also achieve more in the other areas of my life. This then makes me feel good; in control; capable and successful. In short, I don't feel like a bad mother.

So, I need to get my sense of direction back and what better way to do that than to list here all the blogging things that I need to do now my 12 days of Buffy challenge has finished. Here's my to-do list:

1. Write a guest post for the lovely Cat at Yellow Days
2. Join in with the new I Spy photo meme; that's started over at Mum Of One
3. Accept my Leibster award from Bluebirdsunshine and More Than A Mum
4. Write an "all I want for Christmas" post courtesy of the tag I received from Dorky Mum
5. Get involved in the grooving mums challenge set by Kate On Thin Ice
6. Write an "I'm a celebrity, get me out of here" post courtesy of the tag I received from Mummy Mishaps
7. Rewrite the "about me" section of my blog
8. Link my 12 days of Buffy posts to my 12 days of Buffy blog page

I'm going to get started tomorrow so if you catch me dawdling on twitter, give me a prod and send me on my way!