The life as a fire wife comes with a lot of things that can be extremely stressful within itself. Balancing schedules when our firefighter is on and off shift. For me I have written before how being extremely routine centered helps us but also knowing that routines can change or get out of balance sometimes. Always making sure to never fill my plate more then I can handle. But it isn’t always the case sometimes managing time and routines gets out of hand. Figuring out how to handle a full plate especially when the fire life comes into play.

Station Visits

It’s been about a year now since I have started my online classes and trying to figure out the direction I wanted to take my education. It has been manageable adding on this extra thing to the mom life/fire life but took a little adjusting at first. Then this year we added on the nonprofit and my husband promoted. It’s changed the schedule and it has changed my routine. My daughter finished her first year of school and started her second. My youngest has been stuck with the task of always being along for the ride. People have mentioned how they don’t know how I do it. And honestly it hasn’t been easy but it is getting easier. For probably the first month of my online school, weekly, I would tell my husband “I can’t do this! What do you think I should do? I really just want to focus on the nonprofit.” And every time I traveled down that rabbit hole he would tell me, “I think you would regret it, and to finish this semester and go from there.” If it wasn’t for him I probably wouldn’t have handled the same. But still the weeks went on and it was still hard.

So, I made a choice. I chose to start weekly changing my number one priorities. It has been something new for me but it has helped me manage my full plate. I would take Sunday to sit and think what is my priority this week? Is it giving 100% to my class, the nonprofit, my marriage, and my kids, friends, oh myself haha….whatever the case. And then I would know without being stressed where my priority was for that week. It took a lot of pressure off of my shoulders. And it has helped me ease into this new routine. I still have my days and weeks where sometimes everything demands my attention and I have learned to take it as it comes.

Plateful

I feel like this was something to talk about because it relates no matter what your schedule or life looks like. In this fire life we have these extra stressors and extra things we have to learn how to do and sometimes we think “how in the heck am I going to do this.” But, we do it and we get through sometimes alone and sometimes with someone like my husband who doesn’t let me give up. Whatever the case may be for you I wanted to give you that same encouragement back. Take it day by day, week by week, don’t let yourself doubt your abilities and even when that dang plate is full don’t give up. In the end it’s only making you stronger to add the next thing to it.

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