The Mediocre Mom Feeling

It’s no secret that I want to be two different people. On one hand I want to be the most awesome stay-at-home mom ever and on the other hand I want to be a powerful career woman.

Juggling all of my responsibilities is sometimes sooo hard that I wish I could take a deep breath and just focus on one thing, but I can’t usually do that. When I’m at home I’m always preparing for the next busy day and when I’m at work, I always have to rush out to make it home in time for my kids. I’m trying to be both people at the same time and I feel like it’s just not working.

Instead of feeling accomplished that I am actually balancing work and motherhood I feel like I’m just doing a mediocre job at each. I’m an ok mom and I try to spend as much time with my kids as I can, but there is so much more I can do for/with them if I just had the time. On the flip side, at work, my boss is so incredibly understanding when it comes to work-life balance that she’s making it hard for me to leave and explore other opportunities. I’m sacrificing my career so that I can be a little bit better at being a mediocre mom.

I guess what brought on these feelings this week is because I’m trying to find a project at work to do that will get me to the next level in my career.  I like taking new chances, but then there’s always the thought process I go through where I realize that I always have a limited amount of time and energy that I can put into such a project.  I sometimes wish I can just focus on one thing and be really good at it.  Instead I have to focus on two things (career and kids) and try to be really good at both.  That realization can be incredibly overwhelming.

In the end I think that this is just the struggle of the working mom. Being the perfect combination of mom and career woman is extremely hard and might even be impossible. No one can do everything, so I just have to be happy that I’m able to do as much as I can.

Do you also want to be two different people?  How do you reconcile these opposing feelings?  Do you sacrifice one goal for another?

Until next time,
Shaindy