insanity

All of my blogs sit neglected lately. I have plenty to say but can't seem to work up the right words, or don't make the time to do so, and then the thoughts start to feel old and stale. Then I start to feel like I've missed too much, can't get caught up, so I don't bother. Story of my life, a lot of the time. But hey, that's why I'm in therapy, to try to be a more productive human being.

I spend a lot of my time caught up in other people's lives. We're very social; it never seems like that much to me until someone remarks to me 'wow, you've got a lot on your plate' or 'wow, you spend a lot of time with your friends / being social / planning stuff' or 'hey, when do you take time for YOU?'. All of these being questions my therapist has asked me recently. Interesting things to mull over. I do take time for me, sometimes, but a lot of the time it doesn't feel like enough. Am I stretched too thin? All of these things, all of these people, they're important to me. How do you cut back?

It's the same problem I have with making plans and getting things accomplished in my life. I have a list of things I work on each day, and I rotate through them, spending half an hour on each thing. It started as a small list, with maybe 7-8 things...totally doable in a day, some of them maybe even several times a day. The list has slowly grown. As I sit right now, the list has... 25 things on it. 25 things I try to work on, half an hour at a time, rotating through slowly, in between demands from life, my kids, my pets, my husband, my house, my family, my friends, myself. If I make it through every item on the list once in a week I'm lucky. Once again I am plaguing myself with too many things to do, but I feel like I'm failing if I don't devote some time to all of these things occasionally, and I can't seem to prioritize. Cutting back is really hard for me. And now, with some of these things, deadlines are looming and I feel like I will fail if I don't get to them soon and time (mis)management once again has taken over my life.

I do the same things over and over again, expecting different results. We all know what they say about that. Every time I set them up, though, I tell myself I'm doing it a little differently this time... it's not REALLY the same method... this time I've hit on the magic combination that will work for me!

I'm still overweight, and not making much progress there. The house is still messy; we keep making tons of progress and then mucking it right back up. I'm back to pretending I don't have a basement (that's half my house, in case you're keeping track) because it's so messy again, and because my spider phobia is raging out of control BIG TIME lately. I'm convinced it's infested because it's a mess so I just try really hard not to go down there, or at least not to go down there alone. This makes a number of things in my life really difficult, but I'm not quite prepared to tackle that particular issue of mine just yet. I can't seem to keep on top of any progress made upstairs; every time we get it in shape, it seems to rage out of control again within a few days. I don't have a good method and I just don't know what to do about it. Financially, we're not doing so well either. We struggle still to live within our means; we have a good plan in place for paying off a lot of debt but I worry that we're just going to keep overspending beyond our income, charging stuff, and running those credit cards back up. We need to get things under control, and sometimes I feel like that's never going to happen.

I've never been the most patient person. I don't do well looking at my long-term goals and applying them to my actions TODAY. It's difficult for me to limit myself, and it's difficult for me to fight my immediate wants without feeling very bitter over things I don't or 'can't' have. I'm trying really hard to overcome this. It's one of the things I'm addressing in therapy. I'd like to be a happier person. I'd like to remain constantly excited about my long-term goals (and I do have them, of course!) and have that help me be more pleasant when it comes to passing things up in the NOW. I'd like to be happier with living a more simple life. Sometimes I'd like to BE living a more simple life.

I'm just not always sure how to get there.

Don't get me wrong, I do have days when I feel very productive and feel like I'm making progress. I'm not always feeling bitter or down in the dumps. I'm more contemplative than anything lately, really. I'm just working really hard to make positive changes in my attitude and in my life, while still trying to overcome those things I perceive as roadblocks to my goals, and I get frustrated a lot that it doesn't seem to be happening very fast. Sometimes I can't help but wonder if it's ever going to happen, and if it doesn't, can I be happy with what I have? That's a tough question. Sometimes we need to ask ourselves tough questions in order to move forward. Sometimes the way forward isn't exactly what we envisioned it would be. Maybe by being happy with what I have, I will open myself to greater bounty from the universe. Or maybe I just waded into a giant pile of metaphysical horseshit.