Not Batman

It’s so hard to get back into blogging after a long summer holiday, especially now that the kids are back at school and life’s super freaking busy again.

My kids are way past the age where parenting them just means to feed them and to bathe them and to take them for walks. They are proper complicated human beings and parenting right now is all kinds of emotionally / mentally / physically exhausting.

Some of it is positive stuff of course – all the late night talks about drugs and sport and health and peer pressure, for example – but it doesn’t mean it’s not exhausting.

When you add up dealing with all kinds of school bureaucracy (my kitchen all is taped full of all kinds of schedules, I kid you not), monitoring/assisting with homework, peacekeeping (they’re boys, they fight a lot), preparing daily packed lunches, cooking dinners, tidying up #allthelego #allthetime, dealing with my mother’s opinions on everything (#alltheopinions #shelivesinmyhouse), having to download no less than NINE software programs and to view no less than THREE HOURS of tutorial videos with my 10-year old so he can do some complicated 3D coding, stressing about him starting to come home from school all on his own (I was totally not stressed about it until he said “What if I fall asleep on the bus and end up at the last stop at the end of the line?”) and the little things in my own little life like my job and my Crossfit and running habit – what you get is pretty much no time/energy/enthusiasm to blog.

I still do all the Crossfit and some running and bouldering but I’m also a little bit frazzled and a little bit tired and a little bit not setting any PBs in any area of my life right now.

Usually I’m ok with just cruising, just doing the best I can and being average at everything. My main criteria for anything has never been to be perfect or to always set PBs or #GOHARDORGOHOME, it’s always been to just have fun.

But then I go for a run after school drop-off one day and while dragging my Crossfit sore legs up a gigantic hill, another mother from the school just sprints past me all the way to the top. She’s young and beautiful and a doctor and has 5 kids. The moment she passes me I feel like the ugliest and most pointless elephant on the planet.

And then Muriel goes and runs an ultra. And Jen runs an ultra. And Tess does a couple of triathlons in as many months. And Bangs starts writing for ELLE. And so on and so on…. and I’ve fallen into the biggest trap of all – comparison.

Comparison = the killer of all joy.

I think I need to ponder and meditate on this and I think my next post will either be “How to become Batman” OR “The Art of Being Average.”  I have a feeling it’s ok to sort of be a little bit of both. A little bit badass who’s focused on some serious goals (but not necessarily All The Big Goals) but also a little bit happy just to BE.

Anyway, I don’t really know what I’m saying. It’s late and I’m tired and I’ve got tomorrow’s packed lunches to figure out 😐 (my kids don’t eat sandwiches. #sendhelp)