Tuesday, August 22, 2017

Maintaining Balance In Our Bodacious Dog Mom Life Part 1: Like With Most Everything, There Needs To Be Balance


One of the biggest lessons I've learned from being a work at home Dog Mom and running Bodacious Biscuit Love is there has to be a sense of balance across the charts. To this day, at times, I continue to struggle because our life is always evolving. Changing. Our family has gotten bigger. Lisa was promoted to Assistant Department Manager in late Spring. My work life and focus has shifted. Our life in the here and now isn't the same as it was a year ago. I'm sure our life a year from now won't be the same as it is today.

Fine tuning my process of establishing and maintaining balance will be an ongoing thing. 

I've been thinking a lot about this lately. Balance. When I think about where I was a few years ago versus now, I can see the vast amount of improvements I've made. We both have. We've made great strides over the years with restoring balance in our home, daily life, family, etc. Much needed. It's been quite refreshing.

On the other end of the stick, restoring and maintaining balance hasn't always been met with kind words and the support from others. Understandably so. The path to restoring and maintaining balance often includes saying no, making changes, eliminating factors that contributed to the chaos and disorder, and being realistic.

At the end of the day, balance is necessary. 

I've lost count how many times someone has asked, "How do you do it?" or "I don't know how you manage to do everything you do in a day's time." I'm grateful for the acknowledgment. I'm truly flattered. Above all, I'm humbled by the kind words.

Truthfully, I have no words of wisdom or highly sought after advice. I'm not in the process of writing a self-help book. My belief is that every situation is different. Every life is different. Every circumstance is different. We're all individuals. What works for one might not work for the other.

Plus, I'm not a fan of self-help books. 

This series is about putting our experiences on the table. Truthfully. In the raw. The good stuff and the messes. The struggles we've faced head on during the ongoing process of restoring and maintaining balance. By doing this, I'm hoping that others can find common ground whether it's a tiny portion or on a larger scale.

And, it might answer a lot of questions. In the past year alone, I've been swarmed with messages and emails...

"How come you're not participating in events any longer?"

"When are you going to have your next Bodacious Yard & Bake Sale?"

"Why can't you do the same fundraiser this year that you did last year for us last year?"

"I thought you were going to add more dog biscuit flavors last year?"

"Two years ago you baked platters of cupcakes and cookies for our bake sale. Why can't you help out this year?"

"Why haven't you enlisted a small group of volunteers to help you out?"

"How come you took down your display at (this) location and (that) location?"

"What on Earth were you thinking when you shared the recipe for your Bodacious Biscuit Love Peanut Butter Dog Treats?"

"Why can't you deliver a Bodacious Raffle Basket for our event?"

There are answers and explanations for all of the above and it all boils down to balance.

Life is life. There are messes. We all step in that pile of proverbial dog shit every now and then. We've all experienced trials and tribulations and growing pains and periods of time when things were really out of balance.

If you can relate to any of this. Great. If not. Fine. Regardless, I'm going to share it. Talk about it. We need to do more of that. Myself included.

Balance. 

I'm going to use that word a lot.

Get used to it.




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