How to Blog and NOT Neglect Your Family {5 Helpful Steps}

I get the emails and messages all the time… “How do you do it!?! How do you homeschool and take care of your family AND run a blog and write curriculum?” The honest answer is that I’m very prone to juggling more than I can actively keep in the air, and I tend to drop balls left and right. So let’s clarify up front that I don’t have “it” figured out, and I’m learning as I go.

But I have figured out 5 things that keep me from dropping all the balls all the time that I hope will be an encouragement. I’m definitely still “fine-tuning” these all in my own life, but I believe they’re a great foundation.

1. Define your mission and cast a vision. 

I think the first step to staying on-task in all areas is to recognize what our mission is. At Life, Abundantly my mission is to take the heavy burden of discouragement, comparison, and condemnation and move it from the bent back of a weary homeschool mama and place it back upon the shoulders of our more than capable savior.

My life mission is the complete glorification of God- not just in the words on my blog but in how I live out my life while I’m doing it. My mission as a homeschool blogger cannot be separate from my mission as a wife, mother, and home educator. 

So how do we fulfill our mission as homeschool mom AND homeschool blogger and thusly be able to count ourselves as successful at both? We must first craft a vision for what both of those things look like, THEN we can begin to order our steps in pursuing it. Creating this vision takes intentional prayer and focus, and I’ve created a workbook just for creating a vision for your homeschool (that you can grab here).

2. Keep everything in its place.

I have a tendency to seek acknowledgment and affirmation from others. Because of how good it feels to thrive in my gifting and receive acknowledgement for that, I can find myself treating my children, our homeschool, and my husband as a checklist to be completed so that I can get back to my “real work” of writing encouraging words and creating curriculum. This mindset completely contrasts the priorities I hold in my heart. My true priorities are Jesus first, closely followed by my relationship with my husband, relationship with my children, then their education, THEN my work. It’s an important, intentional act to CHOOSE these priorities daily.

 

3. Talk to your family.

If we are going to be taking time away from our family for this work, it’s absolutely essential to have their support. Before you dive headlong in, discuss in advance the need to spend 15-20+ hours away from your family, in front of a computer. Make sure that everyone in your family has right expectations about what time of day you’ll work and what they will need to do to make up for your absence. It’s important that they too are invested in your work for the long-haul. Nothing is more foundational to your success than your family’s enthusiastic support of your calling! They will have to fill in the gaps for you (and there WILL be gaps), so set those expectations up front.

4. Set your work hours, and stick with them.

I don’t just mean with your hands but with your mind and heart as well. The work of serving our family is more worthy and good than anything we could write on a blog. It’s hard, holy work. So when you’re working on your blog- work hard and work intentionally. But when it’s outside of your family’s agreed-upon work hours, then just. don’t. work. Leave your phone in a different part of your house, turn the computer off- whatever you need to do, make it happen to be fully PRESENT in the moment that you’re in. Brain-dumps onto a legal pad are a reliable tool that helps me accomplish this.

5. Stop multitasking.

Multitasking is the disease of the distracted. When you attempt to do more than one thing at a time, it divides your mind and your heart. Your mind and heart cannot be on the email that you are replying to, the blog that you are trying to quickly type out, or the Facebook message that you are responding to, AND your two-year-old’s cries for your attention at the same time. One of those things is going to get your full heart and your full mind and the other will get leftovers… almost every time. So if you’re attempting to multitask in order to get everything done, simply ask yourself: which is getting the leftovers and which is actually getting my heart?

I hope that you’ll be encouraged that no one can “do it all” perfectly, but that by being very intentional about our vision, our hearts and minds, our schedules, and our expectations, we can “do it all” well enough. Fortunately, we have a God who not only strengthens and sustains us but is glorified in our weaknesses.