When you need margin in your day are you seeking breaks or escapes? Recognizing the difference is crucial to your job as a mom and homemaker.
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TRANSCRIPT
As moms, it is easy to get overwhelmed and to need to take a step back and to want and crave breaks throughout your day. And in many ways, this can be a good thing too. However, in this podcast, I want to explore the idea between taking a break and escaping and distracting yourself to the point that you don’t want to return.
This is an important conversation that I don’t think we talk enough about in this culture. So let’s dive in.
Hello friends! Welcome to the Raising Arrows podcast. I’m Amy Roberts from raisingarrows.net and this is episode number 166, Breaks Versus Escapes.
I am a large family mom who homeschools. I am a homemaker. I am a military wife. I have a blog. Because of all those things, I need a break occasionally. And I don’t begrudge anyone needing a break, no matter what their job may be, because I think we do need breaks as human beings.
In fact, God created a Sabbath rest for that very reason. We need breaks. It’s built into us. It’s something that we have to do, because as human beings, we are not able to just keep going and keep going and keep going, doing the same thing over and over and over again without some sort of rest. So breaks are good. We can all admit that breaks are good.
So now that that is established, we need to talk a little bit about how we take our breaks, why we take our breaks, when we take our breaks, and whether or not those breaks are actually doing us good.
I kind of touched on the why we take breaks. Obviously, for me, it’s because I have a lot going on. I have a lot of kids. I am homeschooling all of them. I am managing my home. My husband is gone for stretches of time with military exercises, and I also run a busy blog and podcast and YouTube channel. There is a lot going on in my life, and so occasionally I need to take a step back. And my guess is you probably also have a lot going on in your life that you need to take breaks from as well.
It is easy for us to get overwhelmed by the everyday. It’s easy for us to feel like there’s just too much on our plate. And if I could just get a second to take a breath, I’d be able to jump back into this.
It also might be a matter of you just wishing you could finish something. And so your break has to do with maybe a hobby or something that you do that actually has an end point. Because so much of what we do as homemakers and mothers is never finished. It’s never complete. It’s always actually in a state of disrepair. It’s always falling apart and we’re always building it back up. So as homemakers, as women, as mothers, as homeschool moms, it feels good to finish something.
It’s the whole reason that I started crocheting. It’s actually the reason I started blogging. I needed something that would be finished. So when I wrote a blog post and I pushed send, it was done. It was out in cyberspace and it was complete. Now things have changed since then, and there’s a lot more added to the whole blogging, podcasting, youtubing scene that didn’t used to be there, with social media and graphics and SEO and all of that stuff that sometimes it can feel like I need a break from that as well. But originally, the blog was a break for me. It was a change of pace and it was an opportunity to do something different that actually did have an end point.
So right now, what I do is I crochet. The blanket ends. Eventually the project ends. And I can say “Here, I have made this and it is complete.” I sewed for a number of years for the same reason, scrapbooking, whatever it is, there are things you can do that have an end point and that helps you to take a break.
Taking breaks also gives you an opportunity to change your brain. If you are finding yourself in a really negative thought pattern, taking a break can be enough to step outside of that and change how you’re seeing things.
So definitely, if any of those are your why, a break can be a really good thing for you.
How about when?
When should you take a break? Well, ideally, you’d take a break whenever you needed one. But as a large family homeschool mom, you don’t always get that luxury. Sometimes you have to plan those breaks, and that’s actually what I have done.
In the morning, I make sure that I have had a cup of coffee on the deck, or at the breakfast table, or in my living room in my chair. It gives me a minute to just sit with the warm coffee in my hand. I smell it. I breathe it in. It’s the time that I pray. It’s the time that I think through my day. It is a break for me at the very beginning of my day. And what that does is that builds margin into my day. It builds some white space where I have a second to think before we dive into everything.
That’s also the reason that we don’t start school until 10:00 a.m. is so that I have had a good amount of time in the morning to prep things, to look over the lesson plans, to drink a cup of coffee, to have breakfast, to sit on my deck and listen to the birds. I’ve had some white space and margin. That’s actually a good way to start off your day – putting that break at the beginning so that you’re not starting on empty from the very start of your day.
I also take a break at lunch. Sometimes I will eat alone in my bedroom, or I’ll sit on the deck with one of the kids, or we’ll all sit out on the deck. Something about the open air gives me a break that I can’t really get otherwise. And so I do that for lunch. I make sure that I have some time where I’m regrouping and I’m kind of just breathing.
I’d also encourage you to put your kids to bed at a certain time each night. Now we’re kind of late to bed. That’s just who we are. We’re night owls. But I have tried to have a bedtime throughout the years that still gives me a little bit of time to do some of the things that I need to do and take a break if I need to.
It’s almost like having business hours. There comes a point where you need to shut off the homeschooling, you need to shut off the homemaking. You need to shut down the kitchen. You need to stop thinking and thinking and thinking, because there are actually times, where as a mom, you’re going to be up in the middle of the night anyway. So you’re going to be working throughout the day and throughout the night. So if you get those kids to bed and you give yourself some space and margin at the end of the day to just take that break, that’s a really good time to unwind and reset.
Now, one other break time that I’d like to acknowledge is when you take a big break, an extended break, one that has you leaving the house or has your family leaving the house and you staying at home. Sometimes these can be good, especially if you have really hit the end of your rope and you are needing a long time to regroup and reassess things that are going on in your life.
My husband and I used to take big breaks by going to homeschool conventions over a longer weekend. It gave us a chance to refresh and regroup as a couple. It gave us a time to take a break and not be doing the same thing we were always doing day in and day out.
Sometimes these are fantastic.
Sometimes you need a break from your break, and that’s tough.
You need to really figure out what kind of long break actually helps you and what kind of long break actually just hinders you and makes it harder for you to do your job. When you get home, if you feel like you need a break from your break, it probably wasn’t a good break. And so those longer breaks are the ones that I feel like are the hardest to figure out. Because sometimes with travel or with being away and maybe even having some obligations while you’re away, even if they’re different obligations than what you have at home, sometimes those can actually drain you more than you intended them to. So, something to keep in mind.
Okay, now let’s talk about the key point here, and that is the how you take a break and what the ramifications of that how are.
Years ago, I wrote a post called The Me Time Myth. It sort of exploded the Internet at the time. And some of that was because it was taken in a way that I was saying, “Don’t ever take any breaks and just run yourself ragged and it’s okay because you’re a homemaker and blah, blah, blah.”
Well, that is not what I was trying to say. And years later, I did another post called The Me Time Myth Revisited. And I tried to explain that people are always going to take issue with that whole thing.
I’m not going to try to rehash that, but I am going to tell you that when you take a lot of me time, a lot of self care, a lot of, I don’t know, “inward gazing,” – I have a friend who calls it navel gazing, where you’re thinking about yourself. When you take a lot of that, it actually is not refreshing. It’s not a break. It doesn’t help you. It’s actually an escape. It’s a way for you to escape your life.
And typically, it’s not a good way for you to get encouragement to keep going with the job at hand. And that’s where the name of this podcast comes from – Breaks Versus Escapes. We have to figure out if the things we’re doing to take a break, the distractions that we’re putting into our day, are they things that are really beneficial to us? Are they done in a way that encourages us and spurs us on to get back at our job and to do it well?
Or are they just escapes? Are they distracting us ad nauseam to the point where we don’t want to go back, we don’t ever feel like we’re done taking the break. And that’s what The Me Time Myth was about – that perpetual “I never feel like I want to go back to my job. I just want to always be here with myself, enjoying my me time. Why are people bugging me during my me time?” It becomes a selfish cycle that is never enough, and that’s why the how of taking a break is so incredibly important.
All right, so let’s kind of talk this through, give you some ideas. I’m going to give you some examples from my own life. However, as always, this is a very personal journey. This is something you need to figure out for yourself, because what may be an escape for me may be a break for you. It’s really going to be your heart attitude and how you feel at the end of the break, and also how you feel if someone were to interrupt you during the break. That will be the determination for you as to whether or not this is a break or an escape.
Okay so, years ago, I liked to sew. I had these adorable little girls. They’re still adorable, and I have more of them. But anyway, at the time, I had these two little adorable girls, and I loved to sew for them. And initially, the sewing was actually just a break. It was a chance to finish a project. Like I said, it gave me that finishing touch that was so wonderful as a young mom. And I was actually sewing in the same area as my children. We lived in a rather small house. My husband had a home office that was also my sewing room, that was also our homeschool room. So everything was happening in the same place, and I did all of that right there with them. That was a break. I never felt inconvenienced by the children. I never felt like they were interrupting me. When I got to a stopping point on the sewing, I just put it aside and moved on with my life.
However, several years later, in a different house, I had a sewing room that was in the basement in a guest room. It was cubbied away, back underneath the stairs where nobody could hear me and nobody could find me. And it was definitely an escape. I could literally shut the door and be down there for hours. And if the kids came in, I felt like they were invading my space. I felt like they were bugging me. I would say, “Just a minute, wait. No, I don’t want to go upstairs. I don’t want to take care of that.” And I found myself more and more aggravated by the fact that I was being interrupted.
I was not sewing as a break. I was sewing as an escape, and I would escape into that sewing until the wee hours of the morning and never really be finished. I would keep finding more projects to do. So for me, sewing was one of those things that morphed, eventually starting out good, becoming something that wasn’t so good.
We also have a situation nowadays where we have devices that can easily suck us in, and a lot of times those devices are distractions and escape escapes more than they are breaks. Now, perhaps you have a game on your phone that it’s no big deal if your kids interrupt you. In fact, that’s what I do. I play a game called Township. Yes, I am one of those moms. It is not difficult for me to break away from the game. I just flip it up. I’m done. However, if I’m doom scrolling on something like YouTube or Instagram, especially, especially the short little video clips. For some reason, those are much more addictive to my brain than just posts. I will find myself not wanting them to interrupt me, not wanting to get back to the job at hand. It’s not a break for me – it’s definitely an escape.
I also like to read. However, reading for me has never been an escape. It has escape components. Because definitely I’m seeing the picture in my mind. I’m going to a different place as I’m reading. But if somebody were to come in and interrupt me, I wouldn’t feel like I couldn’t answer their question. It’s very easy for me to separate myself from the book.
I even heard from a woman one time who was devastated because she was getting so wrapped up in her online Bible studies that she couldn’t break away from them to parent her children. You would think that’s a really good thing that she’s escaping to. That’s a really great break to have. That’s not a distraction. That’s something good. However, it wasn’t good for her because she wasn’t being encouraged and spurred on to do her job. She was actually irritated that her kids were interrupting her from her Bible study time. She never wanted to stop to get back to her homemaking and homeschooling. It was literally consuming her, and it was not a good break. It was escape.
So a couple of ways to tell if it’s an escape:
Does it leave you wanting more? Wanting more of the escape or distraction? Do you find that you just want to keep turning the pages, sewing, crocheting, not getting up and taking care of anything else around you? You could literally let the house fall in on you and you would be okay because you were doing whatever it was that you were taking as an escape or a break?
And number two, does it encourage you to jump back into your regularly scheduled life? Does it feel like something that gave you refreshment and energy to move forward? Or are you stuck in your escape? That would be an escape, not a break.
A break is something that you find you’re able to get back to what you need to do. You actually feel energized and ready to do the job. You don’t begrudge anybody pulling you out of that break. You feel like you have taken some time that actually helped you to be better at your job. That’s the difference. And that’s what we need to assess. We need to decide, is this a break? Is this an escape? How do I find breaks that actually help me as a homemaker, wife, mother? And how do I avoid the escapes and the distractions that aren’t helping me at all?
Now, folks, you’re not always going to get this right. You’re going to have distractions that become escapes and you’re going to find yourself down a rabbit hole. But the important thing is to be able to pull yourself back out of that. Ask the Lord to show you where those escapes are and what you can do instead. Ask him to give you opportunities to find margin and time within your day to take real breaks, ones that actually refresh you. Sometimes that might be a phone call with a friend. It might be a cup of coffee out on the deck. It might be just taking a walk. It might be standing in your garage and crying. Sometimes we need breaks. Often we need breaks and we need to build them into our day. We need to find places where there are natural breaks and take them, not fill every bloomin’ second with something to do. We need that margin and that time. But make sure that what you’re doing with that margin and time actually refreshes you and doesn’t end up taking away from you even more.
Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of the Raising Arrows podcast. I hope it has blessed you as much as it has blessed me learning this truth. As always, you can find me RaisingArrows.net, your home for all things large family homemaking and homeschooling.
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