Motherhood: Just like a glamorous career!

I’d Rather Be Writing has an interesting post on a recent episode of the NPR show, This American Life:

The point of the show is that glamorous jobs usually turn out to be boring. The cartographer’s story was one of the most interesting:

Charles Preuss … charted the Western Territories with two of American history’s legendary explorers—John Charles Fremont and Kit Carson. The maps Preuss made were best sellers and helped open the Western frontier to settlement. But, as he wrote in the diary he kept while in the wilderness, he hated pretty much every minute of the expedition.

Preuss had to rough the uncharted frontier so he could do what he really wanted to do: make maps. Isn’t life like that?

I’d have to agree. But I also have to say that the drudgery of every day life—whether you’re an astronaut (another person profiled in the story), a cartographer or a mother, you have to learn to find joy every day in the small things. The day-to-day, whether it be roughing the frontier, stultifying meetings or endlessly keeping your son from playing in the garbage, can seem to be more than you can bear.

If you haven’t learned this yet, let me tell you: you can bear a lot, and probably more than you know. But who wants to just bear his or her entire life? The big rewards (space walks, drawing maps, the perfect day with your kids) are incredible, but you have to get by between them—and they may be few and far between.

I invite you to find joy in the every day today.