Battling the post holiday funk

Happy New Year friends! The holidays are behind us, we’ve said so long to Christmas decorations and lazy days. It’s a new year, and with it comes the prospect of new goals and a fresh start….right?!  Isn’t that how it’s supposed to be?  Well for us there hasn’t been a whole lot of that.  Truth be told I had an entirely different post planned for today.  Actually if I’m being totally honest, I had a different post planned for last week, but I digress… We’re battling a serious case of post holiday funk in the Dreamhouse. 

In the days leading up to the the new year and just about everyday since, social media virtually exploded with people posting motivational quotes, reflecting on the past year, listing their goals and choosing words of the year. It’s almost impossible not to let the energy and positivity sweep you up. Almost. We started out on the right foot at least. Kes and I woke up bright and early on January 1st and before noon he was off to the races on his first DIY project of 2017.  We spent the next couple of evenings setting goals and planning out our projects and blog content for the year.  I started drafting our first post. I had grand plans of spending the first weekend taking down all of our decorations and packing away Christmas for another year…

And then the post holiday funk settled in….

I assumed our return to the regular routine of 6am mornings, lunches, hustling our little guy off to school, daily downtown commutes & full work days, would snap me out of it. However, instead of settling of back into the norm, it’s all feeling like it’s sucking the life out of me. I miss sleeping in. I miss spending my daytime hours with my boys, or just having the TIME to spend however I see fit! That blog post I started 2 weeks ago has been sitting in my drafts untouched for days. Kes’ quick 2 day DIY surround sound installation has stretched beyond it’s second week.  And the main floor of our house has descended into utter chaos.

Dreamhouse Project - Media wall dismantled

Our sleek media wall has been dismantled. There are cables & drywall dust everywhere you look. The furniture is out of place.  And yes, we still have all of our Christmas decorations up. Because after a full work day, coming home to look at all of this only provides motivation to put on comfy clothes, curl up on the couch and re-acquaint ourselves with Netflix.

Dreamhouse Project - post holiday family room mess

It’s funny – after our last post, so many of the comments we received were from friends in awe of how we manage to live real lives and keep our home looking like that. Well the truth is we don’t. Not all the time anyway.  Sure, over the holidays we had a few short weeks where we had a clean, ready-to-entertain-at-a-moment’s-notice home, but, we’re real people and 90% of the time life isn’t like that.  And as you can see, real life in the Dreamhouse doesn’t always look like something out of a magazine.  Just like everyone else, we have times where laundry piles up, dishes sit unwashed for days – and even heaven forbid, Christmas decorations stay up long past when we should have packed them away.  It’s easy sometimes to see people online and assume that they live the perfectly staged lives we see in short bursts on social media.

I did some reflecting over the last little while, and I realized that we started this blog to tell our story. We always meant for it to be a creative and emotional outlet that gives people a glimpse inside of our lives along this crazy journey we’ve set out on.  But what I also realized, is I’m not telling the whole story if all I post is pretty room reveals and then hide away during the periods where we’re living through all the hard parts.

Right now, this is one of the hard parts.  And for 2017, I’m embracing it.

Dreamhouse Project - embracing the post holiday funk

I know that our motivation will come back eventually. But in the meantime I thought writing this post might help…that, and wine. Cheers to lazy evenings friends!  For now…

Are any of you feeling like this?  What are your tips for kicking this post holiday funk?  Leave a comment below to let us know what’s getting you up and motivating you!

Comments
  • January 15, 2017

    Oh man… I wish I clink my cyber wine glass to yours and toast to the foggy brain days of early January. I feel ya! We live with the same dirty dishes and sawdust (and cat hair dust-bunnies) too. The one suggestion I can make, that helps me when I’ve had enough and still can’t get in gear, is to do a timed clean up spurt. Fifteen minutes. I set my alarm and I PROMISE myself that I will stop when it goes off. Even if I’m only half done with the decoration packing. Even if my hands are in the middle of soapy water. Knowing that I will be let off the hook gets me to me push just enough to start. Alternate these spurts with a sufficient break (half hour, hour,day… whatever you need), and it gets done.
    Hmm… maybe I’ll do that now. I’ve a post that’s waited months to write up and hit publish… okay fifteen minutes and … GO!

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