Ever get to that point in your life that you feel like you’ve driven yourself right into the deepest rut and just can’t find your way out? You live your life filling your responsibilities with martyr like gusto and taking care of all the precious ones given to you on loan from God, putting aside your own needs temporarily.

And then a bazillion  years roll by and you wake up one day with this shameful sense of resentment, exhaustion, and stagnation and not even sure of who you are anymore.

You physically can feel the slimy fuzzy moss growing on your heart and brain. You figure it must be part of the natural aging process or parenthood or maybe even peri-menopause.

Even if you did know what was at the root of all this stagnation and overwhelming mental exhaustion, it wouldn’t matter – because there you sit, spinning your wheels with your futile attitude of “oh well, whatever….this is just life.”

I’ve been in this mind numbing, body aching rut for a bit now. Actually for a while. But alas, I always manage to stoically “pull up my big girl panties” and do all the things I should and what’s expected of me…sometimes even with a great big smile.

But, in the end, I’m still finding my way back into the “rut” and once again asking “what next?” So, this morning, after some very eye-opening and inspiration reading time, I know what I’m going to do first (at least for today).

My children started their day out by building forts in their rooms with sheets, blankets and chairs. Fun stuff! This absolutely used to be one of my most favortite things to do when I was a child. I’m sure that everyone could say that its actually a “rite of passage” in childhood. Sure it makes a mess, but life is messy…or it should be. If your life doesn’t get a little messy every now and then, you are not living. Are you making your home, your family a shrine? Live in your life and your home; truly passionately live in it for once….If there aren’t a few chaotic messes now and again, then you’re missing the whole big picture and making everyone around you miserable. Most likely, the person that’s most miserable is YOU. The rest of the world is too busy “making blanket forts and playing with play-dough” to notice that you are so very perfectly miserable. Raw fun always comes with a bit of chaos, which makes it more interesting. Isn’t life the same way?

I’ve decided that today I will stray from the usual, shake things up a bit, do things upside down and backwards if need be. I’m so so very tired of the “same ole same ole.” I’m weary with waking up with a sense of dread because I know that my day will once again be just another version of yesterday, the day before that and the day before that.

I’m not entirely sure what this means but I’m going to start by not super sweep cleaning my house first thing today. Or doing the obligatory load of laundry or lining my children up to do their daily tasks….I’m gonna let them build their messy blanket forts and dream up imaginary adventures. Schoolwork can wait until later or maybe we will just “do school” while having fun today. Meanwhile, I’m gonna drink just one more cup of coffee, wear something pretty, and do something absolutely off my own usual Monday path. I’m convinced that the world will still be spinning on its axis and the sky will not fall when this day is over… whether I have a perfectly prim and proper house or not.

Sometimes it calls for irreverence and messes to get out of the “rut.” What’s missing from your life? Fun? Sleep? Blanket forts? Joy? Who told you that you couldn’t have those things? I have the answer for that….

Y-O-U.

Yep. It was you. We are the ones who raise the bar so high in our own lives that we one day find we’re just too worn out to reach it. It wasn’t your mom, the neighbor(even if she’s Martha Stewart), or your uptight sister-in-law. We do this to ourselves.

So, ultimately, its us that has to spin our wheels in another direction and get out of this rut!

So, off I go…..to do my version of “blanket fort building”. Upside down and backward or wonky, it doesn’t matter, today I’m traveling a different track.

and just in case you have no idea how to build a blanket fort….here’s a great blog post how to:  http://simplemom.net/how-to-build-a-great-blanket-fort/