Burn Out is real!

Hi guys and girls. I wanted to write a short post to you all about something that I’m currently experiencing and to warn you all about taking care of yourself or else you’ll play a big price. This happened to me last week and I’m still in recovery. However, in order to tell you how I’ve got to this point, I guess you need to know what’s been going on in my life. Brace yourself...

Well, as you all know by now, I have a toddler who I have to look after at home on my own (with a baby) 4 days of the week. This means that I have to take him out a lot to play groups and play centres to stop him climbing the walls. He is so active and gets into so much mischief at home. I rely on an app called Hoopz. I highly recommend this app as it gives a whole list of activities to participate in on the day with your kids of different age groups.

I have 6 month old baby. She’s teething. I’m currently on maternity leave looking after her at home alone. The screaming during the worst days is enough to give you a migraine but like most mothers, I suck it up! She’s sleeping through the night and set in a routine for her afternoon naps so I won’t complain too much as I know that most babies at her age are not as easy with their sleep pattern. But in order to get her to sleep, she requires some rocking in the arms which messes up my back. Once she’s almost asleep in my arms I then put her down to sleep. If anyone is wondering how I’ve got my baby this way, let me tell you it’s not easy. From the age of 2 weeks, I was already looking for a solution to get her to sleep at night as I was so tired. At the age of 3 months, I tried lavender oil mixed with coconut oil and a drop of peppermint. I use this after bath time and before her final 7pm milk. If you want to know more about her routine and how I sleep trained from an early age, let me know and I’ll do a post or email me. I know a lot of mums out there who are willing to try anything. The trick is to be consistent and persistent.

I have decided to go back to university and take on another BSc course. Yes, I know. I have already got two degrees under my belt so why a third one? This time, it’s Political Science. In the current worldwide environment, I have decided I would like to be a little more informed about why people vote in a certain manner, how dictators are made, who is running our worldwide economy and why populist ideas, such as those against immigration, are everywhere from the USA to Britain to Brazil to Morocco to South Africa. Everywhere! Why are people so over-protective about their country and yet still want to do business with those whom they don’t want to mingle with? How does economics play its part in politics? So many questions that I’d like to answer for myself in years to come. I’m not changing my career. I’m doing this out of my own curiosity.

Whilst looking at the world, I also started to look at my own surroundings and I read about the statistics on boys in gangs. Having a son, it touched me but even more so was the likelihood of my son one day being a target, even if he’s not a gang-affiliated, just because of the colour of his skin. My friends have reassured me that it’s unlikely to happen as my son’s background will mean that he has better opportunities but then my oldest friend phoned me about his stepson - 17 years old, bi-racial, went to a private school, grew up in a middle class suburb in the outskirts of London, lost his engineering apprenticeship because like most kids his age he’s lazy, but somehow had found himself in a gang selling drugs and now trying to run away from the violent gang leader. You could not have picked a better example of a boy who had every opportunity to succeed. It got me thinking that I need to do something. I can’t keep reading about these kids and not do something. It only takes one person, right? So I have started on working on a voluntary campaign. I would like to teach kids about photography. I am relying on donations of cameras and also trying to network to get the word out that I’m here for any kids who want to photo-walk with me on any Wednesday evening.

So I’m doing all this as well as keeping up with social media, my own photography ideas that I’m doing behind the scenes, trying to work behind the scenes on my blog, keeping in touch with friends and seeing my family.

And finally, I’m starting a new business. After getting into botanicals and reading about how different plants and flowers and actually seeing the positive effects on my children and on myself, I decided to start a business to help other people. This obviously requires doing a short course over the summer to learn about skincare and different oils. I am working so hard on sourcing only the best ingredients. I have been networking over the past 2 weeks nonstop. On Wednesday, the labels for my packaging turned up and it was wrong. I immediately started to question myself about whether I knew what I was doing, whether I was good enough, whether I was taking on more than I could handle, WHAT IF I FAILED? At that moment, I found myself between fight or flight as anxiety started to hit me. Ok so I’ve invested a lot of money into this. I’ve invested a lot of time. I’ve sacrificed time with my kids too. Time, I’ll never get back.

Well, as you can imagine the next day I woke up and I couldn’t move. My body was stiff, my back ached, my head was spinning and had a headache, my throat was sore, I could hardly talk. I thought I was coming down with something, which is the worst thing that could happen to me at this time. But I wasn’t. My body merely shut itself down. I’ve literally summarised everything that’s going on but each project deserves its own blog post but I needed to let you all know to look after yourselves. Burn out is real. In the celebrity world, they call it “exhaustion”. You know how you hear that a musician collapsed due to exhaustion. Well, this happened to me. I woke up on Thursday, ignored what my body was telling me, fought through it. Suddenly I felt a dizzy and I fell. Yep, I collapsed! I came to and phoned for help. Now I’m in bed recovering. Please don’t ignore your body. Take care of it. And when your instinct tells you that you’re doing too much, LISTEN!