Ah, look, yet another year has passed us by. Goodbye 2017, I am not sure what to make of you but hello 2018 and the promises that you hold.
I have been largely absent in 2017 because, Master’s degree. When I first decided I wanted to embark on my further education, the constraints of my circumstances – full-time employee with a husband who travels and two littles – meant that I couldn’t go for a course that required regular and physical presence. Online was the only way to go, which was why I opted for a blended learning environment.
To be honest, having online lessons after a day’s work is tough. And exhausting.
But it was also good. The windows that have flipped open, the shutters that have been lifted, everything that I have read and learnt has shown me just how little I know. Gaining knowledge is an empowering and liberating experience, and I wish I had that same sort of thirst for knowledge – as opposed to simply getting good grades and a degree – when I was a student. It’s also made me realised just how broken and flawed our education system is.
On the work front, there have been many changes, some good and some not too great. It’s largely a “wait and see” scenario because so many things are in flux right now. I don’t know how things will pan out but in the meantime, it’s keep calm and carry on.
As a mother and wife, I constantly feel like I am a work in progress, especially since I embarked on my studies. I find myself short on temper and patience, and on some days, I just want to do absolutely nothing after work. I don’t want to talk to the kids, I don’t want to deal with cleaning their poopy asses, I don’t want to hustle them to eat their dinner/fruits/meds or to their showers. It sounds terrible but I just don’t.
Luckily for me, my kids still love their mama with the same amount of zeal and intensity. I remind myself, whenever guilt starts creeping into the fringes of my heart, that I am being an example to them. When they whine about my studies taking me away from them, I tell them that mummy has to put in effort in order to do well. And when I finally graduate (although it feels so, so far away!!), I hope they can see that as the fruit of my labour.
On top of everything, we – well, I – decided that it was time to move out of our current home. This place has served us well over the past nine years but it’s definitely not quite meeting our needs now. I dithered for so long because it’s our first home, the home which we welcomed our feline and human babies in.
This home has seen us hosting our friends for late night Guitar Heroes party. We had adopted our cats here and seen them destroy our things. We ate dinner on the floor while binge watching Supernatural. I had sat on the bathroom floor weeping while in the throes of infertility, and stared at the pee stick in incredulity in the same bathroom when I realised I was pregnant. My babies had slept with us in our bed since the day we brought them home. I had paced the floor of my bedroom in frustration when my baby woke up every 20 minutes. We have loved, laughed, cried, hugged in this house.
But I came to realise that home is where my loved ones are, not the physical walls that we live in. We could leave this house and still build a home somewhere so this is where we stand today, on the cusp of moulding the home of our dream and leaving behind the home where we first begun our marriage.
Consequently, the marriage is in the season where everything else is taking precedence. There is so much that needs to be done on all fronts and we have let ourselves slide down the back burner. So yes, definitely a work in progress but from now till April (when I finally graduate AND move into the new house – it’s all happening at the same time!), we just have to plod on.
Does it sound all doom and gloom? Oh no, not really. 2017 was great for the travel opportunities that we embraced. I took a solo trip to Madrid for my first round of classes and then headed to Paris for a quick getaway. It was truly what I needed, some time alone to be myself again and not the boys’ mummy. Then, we decided to hop onto a plane to visit old friends in Perth during winter and had a lovely drive down to the Margaret River region. Later on, when I had to go back to Madrid for the mid-term classes, I rallied the cousins to travel across Spain with me and we had a delightful two-week holiday with the boys.
In many ways, I have been pretty lucky and blessed in 2017. There were mistakes and tears and frustration, oh heaps of these, but I have lived through them relatively unscathed. If there is anything that I have learnt over the past one year, it is that I am stronger than I give myself credit for.
And there is much to look forward to this year. Finally, I graduate and can say that the blood, sweat, tears, wrinkles and eyebags have been all worth it. Finally, we can shift into a house that is exactly what we need in this season. And with the husband and I approaching our 10th year of marriage, I think it’s time we start prioritising ourselves over our boys and work on us.
So, 2018. Let’s slay, together.
Yannisms 