Vacations Without Your Kids
Our children’s dependance on us is both proper and something that needs to be managed. It’s a wonderful thing that our children rely on us for their basic needs, for guidance, and for instruction. At the same time, this 24 hour job we call parenting is incredibly exhausting. What parent doesn’t enjoy the peace and quiet that only the post-bedtime hours can bring? If we’re not careful, the exhaustion of raising children can adversely impact the most important relationship in our lives: our marriage.
One of the best ways to steal some downtime in order to strengthen your marriage is by taking small trips. Vacationing with your kids is lots of fun, yet it’s also important for you to take trips alone with your wife. After all, while your relationship with your children is important, the core relationship upon which your family is built is your martial relationship. Alison and I took a three day work related trip earlier this summer and we left Benedict with my parents. We missed him terribly, but it was good for us all the same.
Your marriage needs constant attention and maintenance. Marriages don’t fail overnight; it’s through years of neglect that they suffer catastrophic failures. Just as a regular date night is important, so too are these mini-vacations; they’re a time to focus on one another. It doesn’t even need to be an expensive or exhaustive trip, either. A quick tune-up in the form of a simple night or weekend away is all that’s required.
A question may be rising in the back of your mind: how often should we have these marriage trips? There’s no clear answer, but certainly more infrequently than your family vacations. Your marriage is sustained and nurtured through your daily lives. The intimacy that you share as you both experience the safety of sharing your thoughts, hopes, dreams, and desires is one way your marriage is nurtured. It’s also sustained through kind words and acts of service. Additionally, your marriage is sustained through your shared parenting, raising the children that you lovingly brought into this world. A parents-only vacation is simply another outlet for you both to continue to grow your marriage.
I encourage you and your wife to find some time before the end of the year, if at all possible, to have a parents-only vacation. Your marriage deserves it and, above all, your children deserve to be raised in a home grounded in a strong marital bond.
How to Read the News
Online news is both a blessing and a curse. You can get up-to-the minute updates, but oftentimes the initial reporting is wrong. You can read stories from across the country and around the world, yet the stories are usually filtered depending on the bias of a particular news organization. Perhaps the worst part about online news sources is that the vast, vast majority of content is simply republished content from another source.
A few weeks ago, there was an airplane accident in South Carolina in which an Air Force F-16 had a mid-air collision with a Cessna. I read the article on one major network’s website and then went to the local affiliate to get more detailed information. The articles on both sites were the same, verbatim. I went to other major news sites and the exact same thing happened. Each source was hosting the content of this article which was written by a staff AP reporter. What a huge disappointment.
I’ve been subscribing to the Wall Street Journal for the past nine months and I must say, it’s completely changed my views on news. I subscribe for two reasons. First, the quality of the articles improves both my vocabulary and global scope. Instead of reducing language to something commonplace, they elevate the experience by using appropriate and correct words at somewhere around an advanced high school level. It’s refreshing to be reported to as an adult. The range of articles expands my worldview from just where I live to issues and events impacting communities everywhere. Second, I subscribe because they do actual reporting. Generally speaking, the Journal seems to have very high editorial standards and so you don’t find much, if any, conjecture in the articles. It’s nearly impossible to identify the reporter’s thoughts on the issue save in the opinion section. Even better, their reporting is proactive. Instead of waiting for the AP to write the article, they go out and find stories. These stories are ones that no one else is writing. In fact, on the bottom of the front page, every day, is some quirky human interest piece.
Our cultural demand for 24 hour news has put journalists in a very difficult position. It’s an untenable situation that causes them to feel pressured to report something, anything, both to fill time and to beat their competitors. That’s where the newspapers bring redemption. Readers expect updates once per day. That gives journalists time to do research, discover facts and, frankly, to provide content that’s truly compelling. Certainly there are times when I skip articles that were published in the morning because by evening, when I sit down to read the day’s paper, everything has changed. However, for the most part, once per day updates is just right.
Newspapers offer one more key benefit that online news hasn’t quite mastered: a menu of options. News websites are massive and often confusing. A newspaper, even a newspaper’s app, provides a structured, organized menu of articles for you to choose from. They’re grouped by section and organized with some degree of prioritization. It’s through this menu that you find stories that you might not otherwise see and because of that feature, you learn things that you otherwise may not learn. They’re able to do this because instead of filling up screen space with ads, pop-ups, and sleazy clickbait stories, they place other articles in the same category together.
I use my time each day reading the paper as an intellectual exercise in which I expand my mind and my horizons. In all of my years of productivity hacking, I can think of few other habits that have helped me grow faster and resulted in higher rates of satisfaction.
Persistance vs. Overwork
As I sit down to write this post, I’m surrounded my mountains of stuff. My office is a complete wreck and frankly, I don’t work well unless my surroundings are clean. It’s been a very crazy few days between flying, being sick, and chasing Benedict all while maintaining a household. I’ve been seeking a greater balance in my life that involves prayer time, reading time, play time, down time, cleaning time, family time, and exercise time, all of which take away potential work time. Whether you’re self-employed, work from home, have a scheduled job, or are a stay-at-home parent, we all face this great balancing act. The sticky part is determining what qualifies as persistence and what qualifies as overwork.
Overworking yourself is just as dangerous as being too idle. If you’re overworking, then by definition, some other area of your life is being neglected. Too much neglect and you start to move into reactionary mode instead of proactive mode. You become a fire-fighter whose priority is whatever burns the hottest. It’s a bad way to live because, like the rat in the wheel, you never catch up.
Persistence, on the other hand, is a necessary trait. It gets you up at 5am to work on your book. It gets you out on the trail when you don’t want to walk. It gets you to your desk when you’d rather binge watch something on Netflix. It’s the coal in the fire that keeps you moving forward, upward, and closer to achievement.
So how do you know if you’re being persistent or if you’re overworking? Persistence respects family time while overworking rolls right over it. Persistence obeys your work hours boundaries while overworking is always on. Persistence recognizes that vacation is an important component of success while overworking sees vacation as an impediment to success.
If you’re like me right now and feel overwhelmed, unsure of which of the dozens of projects to take care of, then you have to make a decision. What is one thing that you can do right now to get back into the drivers seat? For me, it’s a day of cleaning, organizing, sorting, and purging. I think I’ll start that now.
Overworking: it’s never worth it.
Regroup Weekly
I clean our house every Saturday, both inside and out. The laundry is done, the floor is vacuumed, the car is washed, the bathrooms are cleaned, and the lawn is mowed. Saturday evening is a great time of relaxation for me because everything is in its place. By the following Friday, life has happened and the house needs cleaning again. I maintain this weekly schedule because at some point during the week, everything goes off the tracks and I need a reset.
Just as my cleaning routine has a weekly cycle, so too does your life. Once a week, you need to take an hour or so and get your life put back together. Reorganize your to-do list, prioritize your projects, and plan the path forward. Weekly cleaning allows me the time to address the building clutter. We all have clutter that builds up in various ways and while we usually intend to address the issues, there always seems to be a steady encroachment. This weekly planning time is a new chance to maintain cleanliness and to restore order in your home.
Weekly planning gets you ready for the week ahead. Various factors impact your weekly schedule, so taking an hour or two either at the end or beginning of the week will help you to get everything realigned. Sickness may have taken two productive days away from you, a new project may have started, or you may even have gotten ahead on your to-do list. The better prepared you are for the week ahead, the more productive you’ll be. When you feel boxed in by clutter or overwhelmed by a long to do list and no plan for completing those tasks, it becomes easy to fall into a rut. By setting aside time each week to regroup, both in cleaning and planning, you can be better prepared for the week ahead and ensure that small problems don’t become major roadblocks.
Resolve Conflicts
Far too many of us carry around burdens that we don’t have to endure. Mistakes from the past haunt our daily lives and direct our actions. The guilt remains because, although time has passed since the incident, it remains unresolved. In the spiritual life, we have the Sacrament of Confession. The Sacrament is a time to talk it out, and receive forgiveness for our past mistakes. In our interpersonal lives, we need to make amends. Don’t let your mistakes be enduring.
We’ve all made plenty of mistakes. Some are due to youthfulness, others to stupidity, and others to selfishness and pride. Regardless of the reason, they all point back to us. We’re the cause of the error and that means that it’s up to us to fix it.
The worst possible response to an error is often the one that’s driven by shame: to do nothing. While we may have the capacity, ability, and the contrition to make amends and move on, shame keeps us quiet. It’s just a little too painful, a little too raw for us to breach the topic again. That’s no way to live. We need to summon the courage within, draw from our strength of character, and confront the person. We need to stand up, admit our fault, and sincerely apologize.
You both deserve more. You both deserve the freedom to move on. You both deserve the peace of resolution. Charity demands it and, frankly, mercy is more satisfying than revenge. We tend to get into the worst fights with those whom we are closest with. That means that the ongoing acrimony is preventing both of you from enjoying your friendship. Be bold, be brave, and make amends.
Fighting Financial Fatigue
Perhaps the most difficult struggle that any of us face in reaching our financial goals is the inevitable long journey it takes to reach them. Most of us have goals that are far in the future, like buying our own home, getting out of debt, or retiring in comfort. When we strive to reach a goal that we’ve never before experienced, it can be easy to fatigue on the goal, and to start losing ground. It’s in those moments that your resolve is truly tested.
I’ve found that I start to slip in my determination when I stop dreaming. Financial goals require a lot of dreaming because of their long-range nature. I have to dream about what life will be like when I’m debt free, when I play with my kids in a real yard, and how glorious traveling the world without a schedule or obligations will be. It’s only in the moments that I lose focus, when I stop dreaming about tomorrow and only worry about today, that I slip.
When you find yourself in the danger zone of budget fatigue, ask yourself these four questions:
Why am I working towards this goal?
How different will my life be when I reach it?
What’s broken in my system?
How can I move past today’s problem and get back on track?
When you take a moment to answer these questions you can remember why you’re sacrificing today and better guarantee a happier tomorrow.
Know Your Story
In the not too distant past, I didn’t care much about my family’s genealogy. I knew about my parents and my grandparents, and that was sufficient for me. This viewpoint was completely the opposite of Alison’s, which espoused the joy and adventure of both learning about your history and then going to visit those places. While studying abroad, she took a few trips to European ancestral hometowns and got a small taste of what her ancestors saw and did. For whatever reason, last year, I became intensely interested in my family’s story and embarked on a family genealogy project to learn all about my family tree. I’ve concluded that by understanding your family’s story, you can better understand yourself.
We share a connectedness with our ancestors. At some point, someone in our family made the brave decision of getting on a boat and making the treacherous and uncomfortable boat trip across the Atlantic in hopes of a new and better life in the United States. Their bravery, determination, and frankly, their grit, set in motion a series of events that led to our lives here in America. We’re living where we are because of them. Their sacrifices have yielded tremendous opportunities for us. Beyond just our physical location, we may be benefiting from all sorts of legacies that they left for us, including crafts, hobbies, careers, and faith. So much about what our ancestors did is reflected in our lives, perhaps even in our names.
It can be exciting to learn even the most mundane facts about our ancestors. You can see their handwriting in documents or glean their job history from census data. You might even learn that your ancestors just 100 years ago didn’t know how to write. You might find their name on ship’s manifests or see their marriage license. This time-traveling sleuthing is an adventure in and of itself.
I was wrong when I considered there to be little value in knowing my ancestor’s story. Their story is my story. So much of me is because of them. I invite you to take some time, do some digging, and explore your own family’s history. Know your story and have pride in the sacrifice that your ancestors made so that you can be who you are, where you are, in the land of opportunity.
Walking for Health
Earlier this year, as the temperatures began to rise and Spring poked its head out, Benedict and I started seeing more and more residents along our street spending time outside. Some were just sitting on their porches, others were doing yard work, and still others were playing with their kids. More than a few came up and talked to us, for the first time, and noted how much they enjoyed seeing us out and about, even in the bitter cold winter months. As it turns out, Benedict and I are well known in our neighborhood.
My preferred form of exercise used to be running. I liked challenging myself and trying to beat personal bests. About 3 years ago I converted to walking for health after developing IT band syndrome. What I learned about the benefits of walking surprised me. Walking regularly can have the same positive benefits on heart health as running. Even more exciting, regular walking (10,000+ steps per day) leads to weight loss. As it turns out, excellent exercise doesn’t have to be unpleasant.
The average American walks around 3-4,000 steps per day. Generally speaking, 10,000 steps per day or more would describe an active adult. I use a Fitbit to track my steps (and compete against friends and family) and it helps me not only measure my daily progress, but it encourages me to keep moving. When I’m actively working towards an exercise goal, I won’t sleep until I hit my daily step goal.
While walking does take more time than other forms of exercising, it can be just as interesting. You can explore your neighborhood and community by using varied routes. Keep things interesting by having routes that span different distances so that on days when you don’t need as many steps, you can shorten your workout. On other days when you’ve got all the time in the world, you can get in a few more steps.
Walking can be fun. I’ve already mentioned the competition feature with Fitbit, but even a comparison for yourself between last week and this week can be fun. Use this time to listen to music, podcasts, or audiobooks. Take your wife or your kids with you. Look at the architecture of different homes and plan to build your dream home. Stop in at yard sales and keep your eyes pealed for good deals on used cars. Exercise doesn’t have to be boring or tedious. In fact, it can be an adventure.
Walking for health is perhaps the best way to exercise. It’s a one size fits all approach that allows for you to get healthier without overdoing it.
How to Move Past the Worst Mistakes
Perhaps the most painful mistakes you or I will ever make will involve money. Bad buying decisions, late payments, or even bouncing a check are all extremely embarrassing life events. We all struggle to let go of dumb money mistakes that we’ve made in the past. Yet, your mistake might not even be an external money mistake. Sometimes money mistakes involve only your family, like going over budget on something. Even though it only involves your family, it’s still embarrassing. It’s incredibly important that you be able to forgive yourself and to forgive your wife for money errors.
We’re all sensitive about money mistakes. Money is like a scoreboard, so when you mistakenly blow some, you feel dumb. Paying fees, fines, or penalties stings because there are so many other great things that you could’ve used that money for. Not saving enough for your child’s college may cause them to miss out on their dream school, running that red light could set you back a month on your goal, and forgetting to pay a bill could cost you late fees. Whenever we have a negative money event, it hurts us on a personal level.
Money mistakes will happen. If you’re working, generating income, and making transactions, you’re going to make a mistake somewhere. It’s a statistical reality. Consider the sheer number of transactions that go through your bank account every month! Learn your lesson and move on; don’t let it be a drag on your life.
If your wife is the one who committed the mistake, be exceedingly patient with her. Empathize with her. After all, you know exactly how she feels. Help her work through the issue by showing her that it’s not a catastrophe, just a bump in the road. This can be a moment that either devolves into a fight or brings you closer together. Support her and build up your relationship.
The most important reason for you to move on from money mistakes is that if you obsess over it, you make money your god. You lost some, ok, go out and get some more. Work a little harder, sell something, do whatever you need to in order to get things going in the right direction again. But don’t let this become the headline that dominates your days.
You’re bound to make money mistakes. When you do, fix the problem and move on. Your family will be glad you did.
How to Help Your Wife Live Her Dreams
Alison has been accepted into a medical Natural Family Planning course later this year. I’m not sure how long this has been a dream of hers, but a year into her medical career, I know that she’s eager to live this dream. It’s important that while you’re chasing your dreams, you ensure that you’re doing all that you can to support your wife’s. After all, she supports you in everything that you do.
Depending on your wife’s particular dream, your role will vary. If she’s training for an athletic event, you can help with menu planning, food prep, or child care during her training time. If she’s trying to launch a business, you can adjust your demands on her time. No matter what she’s doing, you can’t do it for her, but you can do other things around her that will allow her to pursue her dream. Be tenacious and willing to sacrifice some of your time so that she can do something that she’s really passionate about.
Your full commitment is required in order for her to be successful. None of us can accomplish anything on our own as we rely heavily on our spouses for support. If you’re half-hearted in supporting her dream, she may never fully accomplish it. That’s the worst case scenario. Give her everything that you’ve got. Find new ways of helping, cheer her on, and do all that you can to help make her a success.
As a married couple, you’re a team. Your wins are shared, as are your losses. By helping your wife live her dreams, you not only help her to have a better life, but you help your family have a better life. You all get to share in the glory of a win.
Chase your dreams, pursue your passions, and do everything you can to help your wife do the same.