The holidays stress me out. They have for as long as I’ve been a Mom.  This year has been even more stressful than usual, I think because I’m creating a lot of stress for myself due to my complete lack of ability to organize. Organize what?, you ask? EVERYTHING. I am the most unorganized person in my entire family.  Which is probably why no one EVER says “let’s get together at Elizabeth’s house”.

When I say that my New Year’s Resolution is to get organized, I MEAN IT. I can’t go on living this way. My family can’t go on with me living this way.  I have no system in place for organizing my blogging, my household responsibilities, my emails, my life in general!  And now it’s the holidays, Christmas is in 11 days, I haven’t even ordered Christmas cards let alone started gathering the addresses, I haven’t wrapped a single present, it’s just all a big mess.

In fact, Chris and the kids decorated the tree, a job I usually love, while I sat on the couch deleting emails. There’s a tub sitting here in the living room full of my snowman collection that I haven’t even unpacked.  Kaitlyn needs a book for her class gift exchange tomorrow that I haven’t even bought, and Nathan has a band concert tonight.

I know what tools I could use to accomplish all of this. I have paper calendars, online calendars, a huge dry erase board in the kitchen. I have a family willing to help me with anything I ask, which makes me so grateful. But they can only help me if I know WHAT I need help with, you know?

Also? It’s been 6 1/2 years that I’ve been writing this blog, and I think it’s time for me to make a change. I started out writing about everything that was happening to us on pretty much a daily basis, and then it became more professional, and now I think it’s time to get it back to being personal.

I guess I’ve been worried that if I was “real”, I would lose the advertisers and the brand campaigns and what have you. But the thing is, I want people who read this blog to know who I really am, faults and all. The truth is, I’m foul-mouthed and snarky and critical.  I care about politics and education and gay marriage and drug laws. I’ve been reading Entertainment Weekly for 20 years and know a ridiculous amount of trivia about TV shows and movie stars. But I don’t write about any of that!

So, that’s my real New Year’s Resolution – get organized and get systems in place so that this time next year I’m ENJOYING the holidays instead of stressing out about them. Can you relate? Are you feeling it too? Tell me in a comment that it’s not just me!

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