how many times can you spot the letter i in:
what’s on your plate? no, i do not mean your literal plate, this is not a diet article. maybe one day, i’ll write down my thoughts on dieting, whether it be fad or lifestyle. today, i want to ask you about what you spend your time on?
i haven’t written for a while (maybe you noticed, maybe you didn’t, no matter). the reason being i ladled a huge helping of something onto my plate and it literally pushed things like blogs, hobbies, exercising, and free time off the edge.
in may of this year (2019) my husband and i decided to buy a local business. technically, we decided to start looking into it and researching around february 2018, but the final papers were signed and the decision final on may 6th, 2019. i knew our lives were going to change, and i braced for it. i figured money would be tight and reed would be more stressed when not at work, but nothing could have prepared me for the craziness that was about to ensue.
to be fair, there were other complications around the same time that led to us losing our church family, so the earth shattering stress and anxiety that hit about a month in was not all due to owning a new business. we found out that a lot of problems were lying under the surface, and it would have been much simpler to do a startup, then to take over a full grown business with a very poor reputation and crazy amounts of drama.
the beginning of july was the low point (which was obviously the turning point as well, if you’ve ever had experience with low points). we had a very full schedule and no employees. so me being the supportive partner i am, i offered to haul the kids to the shop and help run things. i figured it would be a couple of weeks of crazy stress, he would hire a couple of guys, then the kids and i would come back home and pick up normal life again. boy, was i wrong!!
months passed. we worked our way through three babysitters. (because, surprise, trying to run a business with four kids under foot is not possible. for me anyhow.) my perspective on “normal” forever shifted.
i have always admired working moms. marveled at their passion, tenacity, and what i assumed was copious amounts of energy. it was absolutely the hardest few months of my life! i was working 40+ hours starting a business beside my husband and coming home to clean and cook and homeschool and strive to make the kids feel as if nothing had changed. that plate i mentioned?? was more like a waiter’s tray full of plates with me struggling to balance it and also make sure all the loaded plates didn’t bump each other.
i understood the drive and the passion of a working mom, and didn’t know if i could go back to not being involved in the day to day of this baby business i had now poured sweat into.
so what’s happening now? now, i work mostly from home, keeping books, billing and invoicing and paying taxes. tracking the expenses and income and running the social media platforms. have i found a way to balance that waiter’s tray of a plate? not 100%. but most days i get to have the best of both the business world and the mom world! also, i’m starting to work my hobbies back into a normal routine, though it’s a slow process.

user
There are 178 "i"s in the text you provided.
assistant