Oh, hello! It’s been a hot minute, hasn’t it?

My blogging and vlogging have not left my mind since our new transition into self-employment life, but I think I had some unrealistic expectations of how our new normal would play out. I had built up in my mind this party-every-day life, where we would work a little, play a little {or a lot!}, and it was like that for a week or two. We were semi-productive, but mostly, we hung out around the house, hiked Stone Mountain, visited the Yellow Daisy Festival, and walked around the mall…it was awesome. And I honestly think it was good for us to take that time to breathe as a family after such a massive change.

But of course, that pace of life is unrealistic, and I think I am seeing the need for some more structure in our lives. So as we move forward, these are the top three things I am doing to find our New Normal.

1. Prioritizing!

We have a lot of things we are juggling right now; Tim’s travel work, my health and fitness business, homeschool, extracurriculars with the kids, blogging, vlogging, Tim is still instructing the drum line of a marching band and doing contract work for the church, we’re small group leaders, and not to mention we have a house to clean and manage and the holidays are coming up!

What needs to take a backseat for a season? What needs to be eliminated completely? What are our longterm goals? And what are the things that are going to get us there? In the words of Ronald Weasley, “She needs to sort out her priorities.”

I’m working on it, Ron.

2. Setting short-term and long-term goals and incentives.

Now that we are self-employed, we don’t necessarily have bosses telling us what we need to do each day. We don’t have set hours to keep, or even built-in to-do lists of what we need to accomplish. We are having to be very self-driven, so we are rising to the occasion.

Tim and I have been having chats about what we would like to accomplish both long-term and short-term, and I have even set up some visuals for Tim and the goals we have set for him monthly. So far, it has been pretty motivating! I’m really excited for him to reach his first short-term goal, and I think he’s on track to reach it this month! Go, baby, go!

3. Grace.

This one has been the hardest for me. Reminding myself on a daily basis to give myself grace is so. hard. It’s okay if the house doesn’t get cleaned. It’s okay if the laundry gets piled up. It’s even okay if we have to skip a day of homeschool every now and then. I think that when it comes to goals, I am a person of little patience, and I want to see us make huge strides in short steps…but life just doesn’t work that way, does it?

All things are cumulative, and the principle of reaping and sowing will always reign. As long as we continue to do the things, no matter how small, that are moving us towards the place we want to be, then progress is being made and we will get there. We are sowing the seeds of the life we want to live, and the harvest will come. Patience and perseverance. Patience and perseverance. Grace upon grace upon grace.

So what about you? Have you been forced to find a new normal in your life before? Let us know what steps you took to getting there.

With love, Mal