"Life is what YOU make it."

Jenina and the Snowling family.

By Jenina Snowling
I will try to keep this short because as any studying, part-time working mother of 4 children would know, spare time is a rare thing.  So why do “we” do it?  I say “we” as I know I am not alone here.

Well I am sure the reasons will differ depending on the needs of the individuals but for me it came down to necessity.

I remember closing myself in my room late one evening feeling completely burnt out after yet another “ground hog day” of pouring every ounce of myself into ensuring everyone else’s needs were met and the house was looking immaculate for that small space of time before my youngest woke from his sleep or my family returned from their respective kindy, school and workplace only to get home and remove all signs of any hard work that I had put in during the day.

It was in those quiet moments that I realised that this burn out was no one else’s fault but my own.

Initially I couldn’t understand how I could possibly be burnt out when prior to having children I thrived and excelled on working extremely long hours under a lot of pressure? I realised that I suffered from a terrible addiction.

That being an addiction to achievement but in a working environment this addiction was met by achieving required targets or even better achieving pay increases or glowing performance reviews but for motherhood, the fact that you may work yourself to the bone ensuring the family have nutritional meals on the table or all items of clothing have been lovingly ironed, folded and put away or the furniture and windows and all other areas of the house are glistening or all the children have been read to, played with, cuddled and snuggled, taxied here and there and so on there is simply no glowing performance review and obviously no pay increase!  It felt that everything you “achieved” during the day was for nothing.

Only days before this “melt down” happened I had been asked by a friend if I would work for her husband one day a week in his law office to help him with general administration work. At first I was tempted to turn the offer down unsure as to how my family would cope but I soon realised that it was time for me to do something for “me” (even if it was working).

I love the simple words of Eleanor Roosevelt when she said “life is what YOU make it”. It is easy to sit back and blame others for not having this amazing, exciting and most importantly fulfilled life but sometimes we just need to step up and out and “make” things happen to get the most out of life.

So with a little juggling around I seized the opportunity and went off to work.  It was only one day a week but I soon began feeling energised and most importantly “alive”.  It also made me really appreciate my family as they supported me in this new venture.  But the most important thing it taught me was that it was ok to do something for me because believe it or not the world did not topple off its axis when I didn’t spend my day running around trying to please everyone else.

All it took was a little prioritising and the family and running the household continued to run along smoothly.

As time passed and my twin daughters began school I then started to think about what I would do once my youngest was also ready to swoop off to school. I realised that this was my golden opportunity to try something new. I began thinking that if I was to juggle things a little I could possibly do some study so I decided to hit the internet and came across a course of study that was right up my alley infact so much so that I remember feeling all goose pimply when I saw it. This course of study was the Diploma in Conveyancing which was capable of being completed online.  Perfect! Now it was just about how to make this work.

The first step was to prioritise what was important to me which made me realise that whatever I did I didn’t want it to encroach on my family time.  So with this as my top priority and knowing that working one day a week was important for my sanity I knew that any study I was to undertake would be slow but with a bit of perseverance I should complete all required papers (after cross crediting other papers) just as my last child hit school.

It required a lot of organisation but we got there and 5 papers later and am proud to say averaging an A+ on all papers it has been worth it.

So that is why I do this – not just because I am a little crazy but because it is important for “me” to make the most out of “my” life because remember “life is what YOU make it”.

If I have learnt anything over these past few years it is that whilst achieving in my studies and at work nothing is greater than realising this was only made possible by having my extremely supportive and wonderful family behind me, beside me and with me through it all!  We have a saying on our wall at home that our friends gave us, it reads “Snowling Whanau – we may not have it all together but together we have it all!”  For me that really sums it up in a nutshell.