“Sofie is Wicked scary?”
“No, not really Sasha, but it is a bit emotional.”
“What does emotional mean?”
“It’s when you don’t know what you feel but you’re still feeling it.”

Being a stay-at-home mum was quite a new experience for me. I thought I was super busy previously but what awaited me was beyond my wildest expectations. For many years when I’ve been working, I’ve managed to avoid a lot of morning dramas by leaving to work very early. It was quite horrible getting up at 5 o’clock in the morning, but that meant much more peaceful time, sitting with my coffee in the office while Dark D was trying to battle through all the challenges before going to his work. Getting two, adorable, but not very cooperative, children ready for school was my idea of hell.

There was lots of crying, screaming, shouting and there was me stressed out, nervous, with the watch in my hand. The mornings in our house were definitely emotional, I thought. How I’ve become so stressed out and strict, I’ve wondered. My work plans of starting my own business, seemed to be a distant memory when every-day tasks were taking my whole days.

EMOTIONAL (of a person) having feelings that are easily excited and openly displayed.

Richard St John in his TED talk about the secret of success is talking about 8 things leading to it. First is passion. The most successful people started doing their work for love rather than money with big passion. Some of them said they would have paid someone to be able to do what they are doing. There is something really profound in that statement, I thought, as lack of passion in my previous position was driving me crazy in the end. Also when you’re looking after your kids passion towards work is suddenly a big luxury.

I’ve indulged in my thoughts about passion, creativity and focus standing in my bathroom, trying to brush my teeth, enjoying my 3 minutes time on my own, while kids were finishing their breakfast. I was going through the need of being good at something by constantly working on it. I’ve heard from downstairs:

“Mum! Sasha’s put peanut shells in my water!!”
“Sash!” I shouted rather loudly unwillingly abandoning my thoughts. He had rushed pretty quickly and sat on the steps.
“Mum… you don’t have to tell me off! I’m already sitting on the naughty step.”

“And push! David Gallo says, “Push yourself. Physically, mentally, you’ve got to push, push, push.” You’ve got to push through shyness and self-doubt.”
“Now it’s not always easy to push yourself, and that’s why they invented mothers.”
“Frank Gehry said to me, “My mother pushed me.”

For me pushing was starting in the morning when I was trying to deliver my own kids on time to school and was finishing in the late evening where I was trying to push them to bed. Dark D was helping wherever he could, but with a full time job he could only do so much. I’m a mum of two very smart, creative creatures. Despite their beauty and infinite advantages, my daughter is also quite an introvert who loves reading and thinking a lot. Her mind for sure is capable of a higher spiritual realm as well as highly intelligent investigation of all sort of problems, preferably scientific but it also means it’s mostly not on Earth and our present reality at all. My son, very creative, would love to spend the whole day indulging in a play but preferably in his own home with me involved in it all the time.

“Sasha can you eat your breakfast my love?” “Mum… why do you always have to give me so many chores???” “Yeah that’s a big one” I said. “Sofie please hurry up.” “Sofie why are you sitting with the book on the stairs when you were supposed to brush your teeth 15 min ago!” “Sofie you’re standing with your shoe and not putting it on!!” “Sofie is it you playing piano upstairs when we should be on our way?” “What is that big bag Sash?” “Ahh just packed some of my toys to take to school…”

Mothers who left their work to do something different have two full time jobs on their laps. So they have to have more passion than anyone else, put even more hard work in to it, get better and better faster, push the hardest, themselves, the kids, the whole planet spinning. Most of all they have to become almost immune to a lot of crap from outside, but also they should have twice as much fun whenever they can, be selfish sometimes and steal every possible spare time whenever they can. How come so many of them succeed any way? I think it’s because, suddenly when you see how precious, unique it is to do something for a passion, you truly start to appreciate it.

Persist! Joe Kraus says, “Persistence is the number one reason for our success.” You’ve got to persist through failure. You’ve got to persist through crap! Which of course means “Criticism, Rejection, Assholes and Pressure.”