Guilt, guilt, and a little more guilt

Wow. I have so many ideas for this website. There are so many directions it could take, features it could have.

But I'm actually finding it really hard to work on lately. It's like my brain has just gone blank most of the day! I drink my coffee to get me going, and then I sit and watch Timothy Goes to School with my three-year-old. I can't seem to get out of that comfy chair. And I can't seem to clear the fog out of my brain.

I'm looking out my window right now, and it's a beautiful, sunny autumn day outside. The grass is still green, and if it weren't for the bare branches on the trees, I could almost imagine it was still summertime. I keep thinking I should go outside, but do you know how hard it is to get outside when you have four little kids (two of them infants) and it's nap time?

And yet, even though I have legitimate reasons for staying in, I feel horribly guilty that I'm not romping out in the sandbox with my kids while they enjoy the fresh air.

In fact, I feel guilty about just about everything these days. I worry that I'm not a good enough mother because I can't do the things with my kids that I'd like to be able to do right now. I feel bad that I haven't added any more content to YourEncouragement.com. I even feel guilty that I'm doing the dishes instead of cleaning out the kitty litter!

Believe me, I fully see the irony that I am now struggling with the last thing that I actually wrote about on my site. I realize that I'm probably focusing on all the negative things instead of the positive ones, and I should stop it. Yet all I can think is that it's only the beginning of November, and I still have months of winter left to endure, and I'm already so tired of it.

And the kitty-litter fairy still hasn't shown up.

And all my files are still laying on the floor where my son dumped them last month.

And I haven't seen the surface of my desk since last spring.

I guess getting past guilt is a process. Maybe, every day, every minute even, for the rest of my life, I'll have to be telling myself good things instead of listening to the bad. Something tells me happy thoughts won't just show up on their own. Maybe I have to search for them, and then write them on my hands, on my walls, on my bathroom mirror.

So here: I'll start with something good right now. I just wrote a blog post! I'm about to get up and feed a baby, who is absolutely adorable. My oldest son is laughing hysterically at something on TVO Kids. And the caffeine is starting to kick in.