{"id":13847,"date":"2018-01-03T14:48:18","date_gmt":"2018-01-03T19:48:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/?p=13847"},"modified":"2018-01-17T10:27:37","modified_gmt":"2018-01-17T15:27:37","slug":"happiness-is-where-the-heart-is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/2018\/01\/03\/happiness-is-where-the-heart-is\/","title":{"rendered":"Happiness is Where the Heart Is"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve spent the past few weeks, through the holidays, alternating between being hunkered down at home and running kids from class to camp and back again. I&#8217;ve spent the quieter days playing games and building blocks. I&#8217;ve enjoyed unlimited time with hubby while he took so much needed time off work. I&#8217;ve snuggled and cuddled and laughed with all.<\/p>\n<p>And I&#8217;ve completely neglected Beyond Mommying.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve written one new post in the past three weeks. I&#8217;ve been largely absent from Facebook and Twitter. My regular routine of sharing on Pinterest and engaging in my many writer&#8217;s groups fell by the wayside.<\/p>\n<p>And, at first, I worked really hard to feel guilty over it. To force myself to find words to put out there. But it was all a lost cause.<\/p>\n<p>I have a lot on my plate, so many things that I love and that I&#8217;m responsible for. And I spend my days trying to juggle it all, giving everything I have and not always giving each my best.<\/p>\n<p>And I&#8217;ve realized, happiness is where the heart is.<\/p>\n<p>Happiness is found when you are doing something you love. Happiness is based on <em>feeling<\/em> joy in your heart, it&#8217;s not something to be created.<\/p>\n<p>And through the past weeks, I&#8217;ve been exactly where I needed to be.\u00a0I needed to be focused on my family, 100%. I needed that time to recenter and rebuild.<\/p>\n<p>That isn&#8217;t to mean that I&#8217;ve given up on writing. Beyond Mommying is truly like a another child, something I created from nothing and have nourished over the past almost 5 years. But I&#8217;ve struggled for awhile with forcing myself to create new content, with chasing down pageviews and likes and fans. I&#8217;ve struggled with\u00a0<em>why<\/em> I do it at all.<\/p>\n<p>And I&#8217;ve finally given myself permission to follow my happiness in my heart. To focus on what matters most and to give my all to those things.<\/p>\n<p>I plan to continue writing, when I feel the drive or need. I plan to continue sharing, when I want to. I plan to keep Beyond Mommying alive, but I also plan to continue what\u00a0<em>feels<\/em> right, and not what I&#8217;ve been told is right.<\/p>\n<p>2018 is surely going to be a year of big changes for both Beyond Mommying and my family and I can&#8217;t wait to see all the beauty that comes out of allowing myself to\u00a0be filled with the happiness that is in my heart.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve spent the past few weeks, through the holidays, alternating between being hunkered down at home and running kids from class to camp and back again. I&#8217;ve spent the quieter days playing games and building blocks. I&#8217;ve enjoyed unlimited time with hubby while he took so much needed time off work. I&#8217;ve snuggled and cuddled [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13848,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[357],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-about-blogging"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13847"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13847\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13849,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13847\/revisions\/13849"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}