Lazy Is As Lazy Does

The last few months, my motivation has been in writing. Which is good - don't get me wrong - but I was avoiding housework and giving up quality time with my daughters (ages 2 and 4). I was spending many hours a day online and in Word, and couldn't easily get myself up from my desk - I was parenting from my stool. Hubby was giving me grief, my girls were cranky, and I had no energy. And I wasn't effective as a mommy. (In my defense, it hasn't always been this way.)

Over the past week or so my outlook has changed. Somehow I've been charged with a new kind of motivation. Something I read, along with a renewed sense of all the blessings I have to be thankful for, has made me realize the priorities my life should have. My family in and of itself has always been first... but I've found it easy to temporarily put their needs aside while I did what I wanted to do. How selfish of me. I see now that my goal should be taking care of them and our household (I am, after all, a stay-at-home mom), above all, and then my chance/time to write will fall into place.

My writing is still important to me; I'm not at all saying that's changed. I just need to go about it differently. I need to work on my projects through certain times of the day, like naptime and in the evenings. Oh, I know I'll periodically check AW, MySpace, and Blogger throughout the day, but I have to resist the urge to sit for hours at a time, doing nothing but waste time.

Now that my perspective is once again focused on what it should be, there is a downside. I've put so much time and effort into home and family that, at day's end, I have no desire to sit and write. My body's tired, my brain is fried. I feel lazy about my writing now. Opening my WIP and trying to add to my word count is the last thing I want to do. I'm still working on all my smaller projects (ie. my column - an actual deadline seems to motivate me plenty), but I feel like the novel has fallen by the wayside. I'm not going to give up. And I refuse to let it sit, without doing more work on it. But at what point will I look forward to that again?

Any tips for finding a happy medium, a balance?