Vol 9: The Real Life of a Mompreneur – Not Even Close to “Doing It All”

Image: Maggie with Pop! Wed Co

One of the most common things people say to me is, “I just don’t know how you’re doing it all”. I guess my social media life must be showing a slightly altered version of my realty these days, because I couldn’t feel further from successfully “doing it all”. Yes it’s true that I wear many hats, working a full time day job, running this wedding blog & business as my side hustle, and doing the mom thing for just over a year now. And maybe to some of you it looks like I’m “doing it all”, but I am here to tell you today, that I am not. And that it’s likely impossible for anyone to “do it all” without something dropping or your priorities majorly shifting.

A few years ago I watched Shonda Rhimes’ commencement speech at Dartmouth on this very topic. This speech has stuck with me all this time, but I’ve never so fully realized the words she spoke until lately. One of my favorite excerpts is this part:

“Whenever you see me somewhere succeeding in one area of my life, that almost certainly means I am failing in another area of my life.

If I am killing it on a Scandal script for work, I am probably missing bath and story time at home. If I am at home sewing my kids’ Halloween costumes, I’m probably blowing off a rewrite I was supposed to turn in. If I am accepting a prestigious award, I am missing my baby’s first swim lesson. If I am at my daughter’s debut in her school musical, I am missing Sandra Oh’s last scene ever being filmed at Grey’s Anatomy. If I am succeeding at one, I am inevitably failing at the other. That is the tradeoff.”

Though for me it’s not as grandiose as un-edited TV scripts or missed scenes, it’s empty days on the blog, un-responded to emails, never started home projects, outstanding wedding gifts for friends, or the standing up of the #CapRoShop that I’ve been trying to finalize since January.

I’ve always been a do-er. It’s my type-A nature that has me feeling anxious when things are incomplete or unfinished and I much prefer to just DO something once the item pops up, rather than take a wait & see or “oh I’ll get to it at some point” approach. But when you become a parent, there’s a whole slew of things that get added to your to-do list, that you can’t really account or plan for. And it makes the to-do list so long, that even I can’t seem to completely cross every item off the list.

So my latest challenge has been to accept this. To understand that “doing it all” is truly impossible, and instead of being upset, angry, or depressed about the fact that I am not doing everything I want to do, to take comfort and happiness in the things I AM doing. Though I might not be blogging every single day, I am working hard at my day job to hopefully be promoted this year. Though I might be missing out on wedding vendor networking events, I am seeing Evie learn to feed herself, climb the stairs (and on the coffee table), and work on her talking skills. Though the #CapRoShop is not yet up and running, it will be, some day and it will be awesome when it is.

I’ll close with this awesome quote I saw on Instagram from a fellow DC blogger, Queserasahra, where she said “life’s been less about blogging and more about loving life…”. Loving and living life these days has felt so much more important than attempting to do it all. Sometimes it’s ok to step back from the doing, and just live instead.