Recently the glimmer of an opportunity has presented itself to me. For quite some time I've been fighting the desire to do my jobs well... being a mom, a homemaker, a bread winner for my family, and being a good employee at my job, but there's only one of me and that's just not enough to do everything great. In all honesty trying to keep up with it all is slowly driving me nuts. Ok, maybe not nuts entirely, but it's definitely started to have an impact on my physical and mental health.
Every time I have to reschedule a meeting at work because I don't have a sitter or my daughter is ill, I get frustrated that I can't do it all. Every time I have to drop my daughter off at a sitter, I struggle with how much I want to be the one taking care of her full time and trying to balance that with my need to work to support our family. Every evening I come home from work so exhausted that I've not got the energy to fix my family a cooked meal and play with my daughter who's dying for attention after a long day at the sitter's. The laundry and dishes pile up, the dust collects around the house... and when I'm at work, I'm so annoyed by how little I'm getting done at home that I'm not fully focused there either. It's really quite the vicious cycle.
That brings me to the opportunity. I've been trying to get more involved with 4H for myself and my stepson. The original goal was to get our family involved with something we could all enjoy, and even better, something that could help get us off the couch and out of the house more. Enter 4H. This fall we joined the closest club available to us... sadly that's not even in our town, but that's another matter. We picked projects, we've started working on fundraisers, and my son's even a co-games leader. :) Anyhow, the current leaderships at our club is working on phasing out and I'm working on taking on the role of club leader, which means I get another meeting to attend each month. Not a bad thing mind you. So my first leaders meeting was in November. At this meeting, our local county Extension Agent announced that our county had been selected for a grant to work on 4H programming to reach our urban and most at risk youth. I immediately felt a little fire spark. A chance to work with youth through 4H, that included working with youth where I live... nice.
So here's hoping that come January we will be learning more about this urban 4H programming and how we can get involved as a family in helping the youth of our community become more responsible leaders for tomorrow.
