The Not-So-Wonderful

Today…was not so much fun.

I love our life. I really do. I love that we take big risks and do things that other people think are crazy. I love making big plans and renovating our house, and I even love living in a camper with my kids for extended periods of time. I think our life is pretty exciting and it really is wonderful.

I prefer to focus on the positive and exciting aspects of our little world and that really is how I spend most of my days, but acknowledging the other side of things is important too. It would be easy to look at my Instagram feed and think, “they just go do whatever they want, whenever they want, and it always turns out great. Their life is always rosy”. Well, I would never want anyone to feel like they can’t live life on their own terms because they experience ups and downs while things are clearly so amazing for us all the time. So let’s talk about when life is really not wonderful.

 

Sometimes you just keep finding more water leaks between the house and the RV and it feel like the water damage is never. going. to. stop. Seriously. You think you’ve fixed everything between the mold damage from the dishwasher and the water heater breaking, and then the washing machine pours out all over the laundry floor, and the RV is delaminating in spots due to mystery leaks. Oh and did I mention the rental property had all the same problems this month? Yaaaay. Sorry – that one deserved its own paragraph.

Sometimes construction takes forever and it’s just a much bigger job than you expected, at a time you didn’t plan for because of aforementioned water damage, and it all just gets to you. Sometimes you think money is going to be coming in and then it doesn’t, which coincidentally almost always lines up with a whole slew of big expenses.

Sometime your kids pile your living space so full of crap their precious belongings that you feel like you can’t move without tripping on something and you want to scream. Or they spill copious amounts of both chocolate syrup and a tomato-based soup on the carpet in the same week.

(And then in between writing this and posting it, let’s just add 3 of 4 children coming down with some tremendous crud all at once.)

Sometimes it can feel like everything is falling apart or not going as planned.

Those times are not wonderful. They are hard and they’re going to come up when you’re living life full-speed with lots of little ones and lots of house-sized material things to take care of. There are going to be lean times when you’re an entrepreneur and plenty of occasions when things don’t go as planned.

But you know what? I firmly believe that all of that uncertainty and stress and hard “stuff” would come up from time to time whether we lived life like we do, or just played it safe. It’s just part of existing on this planet, isn’t it?

Things happen. We have our choice of how to deal with the not-so-wonderful things. Even more so, we decide what our mindset will be as we deal.

So we remind ourselves that tough spots are temporary. We keep in mind that stuff is just stuff. We walk away for a moment to clear our heads and then we deal with it with as much patience and calm as we can muster. (Actually, if you’re us, you walk away and find a pizza, because pizza makes everything better, but I digress.) The point is, we deal and then we move on. We don’t wallow in the hard times. That doesn’t serve anyone. We pick ourselves up and we look forward to better times ahead.

I think how we handle our hard things in life are what determine how we feel about our life in general. If we get stuck on them, we’ll feel like our life is far from charmed. But if we can see them for what they are – minor setbacks, just kids being kids, temporary moments of stress or downright insanity – then we can all move forward to more positive things so much faster.

And then we hear about someone else’s crazy, hard, not-fun things and we realize that we’re not alone (although, I might be alone in this much water damage). This is just how life works sometimes, for everybody, no matter what they do — so you might as well go out and live the life you want to be living.

And at the end of the day – yes, even the crappy ones – our lives really are all quite lovely.