Staying positive when things are crazy

So, yeah…the baby and the one-year-old (and sometimes the three-year-old) bawled all evening while my wife and I tried to take turns watching them while the other worked frantically on cleaning up the kitchen and picking up the million or so toys that keep mysteriously finding their way out of the kids’ rooms. And the cat puked. Cause, you know, why not?

I know–such is life when you have three young kids. It’s been a couple of busy days and when they get out of their routine, all hell breaks loose.

In the grand scheme of things, a couple of crazy nights isn’t that big of a deal. But still, at the end of the day, after the kids go down for the night, and the house is still in chaos, and my wife and I are still exhausted, it’s just really hard to sit down and write.

So what do you do?

The point here isn’t to complain about the kids; they’re the greatest kids in the world. And I’m certainly not here to complain about being so busy. After all, it’s my choice to try to pursue a writing career, while still working full-time when I should just be binge-watching the Netflix series of the week like the rest of America.

Life happens. And sometimes when it does, it’s difficult to stay motivated enough to work on the stuff that you need to work on. I hate to get all Tony Robbins on you, but when real life gets in the way, you can either give in and give up, or stay strong, stay positive, stay focused, and get daily goal done that you set when you woke up in the morning.

So after everyone went to bed and I sat down at the computer, I knew I had a choice to make:

I could sit there and feel sorry for myself, whining that the kids got to bed later than I wanted them to. We didn’t get all of the stuff done that we needed to. And I’m tired and cranky.

Or…

I could eat a couple of cookies. Accept the fact that the world won’t end if the dishwasher doesn’t get unloaded tonight. Reevaluate my writing goals for the day, and pick the one that I can complete the most effectively before I turn in for the night.

Obviously, I picked choice # 2, except I may or may not have eaten a lot more than 2 cookies.

Sometimes things do get crazy. But you can’t lose your head. You’ve got to be able to pick out the things you can get done in the time you have. If I wanted to write for two hours tonight, and only got one, then my only option was to pick the most important thing I could do for my writing in that hour, focus on it, and get it done.