we've got you covered

i've sat here the last three nights staring at my screen. i don't have writers block per say anymore- i have a list of ideas and musings that's growing constantly, things like:

if i could capture ALL my thoughts for just one day, i'd have blog material for a year. always have the best ideas/perfect sentences when i don't have something to write on OR i can't write fast enough to capture it the way it was in my head.

i'm going to start an underwear rental company called: "we've got you covered" and rent out underwear for special occasions. why? because finding out places like ross will take back underwear and sell it again as long as the tags are on it is DISGUSTING. and apparently, since the clerk made sure to point this little piece of gross out to me, plenty of people out there are disgusting.

i'm going to write an adult themed novel of all my sexcapades titled: "lessons learned the not so hard way."

musings on debating joining the dating world actively again including: where do you meet people? GOOD people. i go out on wednesdays, go to tweet-ups (twitter get togethers for those of you unfamiliar), first fridays (a monthly community event featuring local artists at local businesses), try to go to as many things as i can fit into the schedule that i'm invited to, i go grocery shopping, i chat with people in lines, i'm at a total loss.  where do you look????

back to the underwear topic, i scratched this down: to be confident in life you have to be confident in yourself. to be confident in yourself, you have to be comfortable and supported from the core up. this is a long way of saying I cleaned out my obnoxiously huge underwear drawer this weekend. (what is it with me and underwear lately?)

the start of HUGE blog posts like this: when I was in high school I was shoved into a myriad of counseling offices. one of those happened to be the youth pastor at out church at the time. the same one that made me announce to the whole youth group that i was pregnant because he didnt want them hearing rumors at school. he has since left the ministry to become a computer tech. but he was such a great leader. 
one of the meeting I had with him he asked what I was going to do when I grew up. in my teen angst I replied: if growing up means being like you, i'm never going to grow up.

now, I realize the error in my statement. I eventually did "grow up" in the sense that I have kids, a house, a dog, responsibilities. but at the same time, I haven't grown up because I'm not the one to kill dreams and ridicule people an make them feel terrible about themselves. ESPECIALLY teenagers.  <

so, you can see, lack of material isn't the issue right now.

i've been making BIG life changes that deserve to be written about, i've been working through things the RIGHT ways, learning, trying to improve myself...so, why haven't I been able to write?

i want to lie and say: gee, i have no clue.

truth is i know EXACTLY what's stopping me.

see, one of the big changes i made recently was leaving one of my jobs. i know it was the best decision for me BUT i'm not resolved in how it ended. it's been rattling around up in my head whether to leave well enough alone or go back and work on a better ending. i keep thinking that i took the easy way out- i only listed the reasons for leaving that rocked the boat the least, i didn't get into any of the meat of the issue. i don't like feeling dishonest, and i guess that's the best description for how i feel.

it's one of the strange little triggers i've been seeing in myself lately- i'm fighting SO HARD not to be my mom- i truly loathe every. single. thing. about her. but i fight so hard to be as different as i can that it can actually cause more problems.

one of the things i HATE the most is how she just sticks her head in the sand and ignores issues. pretend it never happened, ignore it long enough and people will quit talking about it. it drives me up a wall to see her do this over and over, so when i see myself doing something that even barely resembles it, i rebel and want to just pick and dig to make sure i didn't ignore ANYTHING or quit without giving a FULL effort. neither is a good approach to problems. i need to find balance somewhere in the middle. sometimes it's best to leave things alone. it really can be just a stupid pride issue and leaving it alone won't hurt anything besides my stupid little ego. sometimes there's some things that just. need. said. it can be an opportunity to help other people grow and if i'm thinking it, general logic says 3 other people are too and one of us needs to speak up and put a voice to it.

so am i actually feeling dishonest? am i just suffering from bruised pride? is it an issue better left alone? i'm working through it but it's taking up the main chunk of brain power right now and blocking the flow of much else.

speaking of triggers though, i'm learning quite a bit from the renew you course- tonight brought up another of my triggers and i was able to catch myself and think through and reason through my reaction- so there's little bit of pulling the head out of the ass going on.

tonight it was about "should-ing" myself. the last video worked through the 7 areas that we need to focus on and make sure we're dedicating time to in order to take better care of our mind for better experiences including being happier, healthier and more productive.

i worked through the list of 7 things, looked at the last 24 hours and which of those i had managed to do then looked at the last week, found the strengths, the gaps for improvement- you get the idea.

well, one of the 7 things of course is sleep health (which i obviously rock at, as i write this at 1230 at night). part of sleep time is sleep hygiene. so then i looked into the "proper sleep habits" of sleep hygiene.

are you starting to guess the spiral?

here's things i SHOULD be doing: SHOULD  be getting 8-10 hours of sleep, SHOULD be avoiding naps, alcohol 4-6 hours before bed, caffeine 4-6 hours before bed, sugar, spice, heavy food for 4-6 hours before bed, exercise, but not before bed, have the proper bedding, bed is only for sex and sleep- no reading, writing, music, tv...

the spiral just kept growing and i started getting overwhelmed and added to the list of SHOULD:

SHOULD be making home cooked meals every night.

SHOULD have a spotless clean house

SHOULD be doing homework and bedtime stories every night

SHOULD be working out daily

SHOULD be doing proper make up and skin care and grooming routine

SHOULD be maintaining craft/creative time

SHOULD be maintaining time with friends

SHOULD be making time for a partner./relationship

SHOULD be taking the kids to sports and extra curricular activities

SHOULD be volunteering at the schools or in the community...

and then i wrote out the SHOULD timeline: 

proper sleep: 10pm to 6am

work: 9am-4pm (8:30-4:30 with commute)

cut off for alcohol, food, caffeine: 4-6 pm so dinner ASAP after work

SO- after work and sleep i SHOULD be squeezing all the other list of SHOULD plus the new things i'm learning in...what...2.5 hours in the morning and 4 hours in the evenings? that's a LOT of stuff to fit in a small window.

and i sat back and looked at all the SHOULD and started getting SO MAD. i'm already a failure at enough things, now i look at all the SHOULD and realize how exponential my failures are. and i just wanted to reject all of it, INSTANTLY.

SCREW YOU. i don't want to even try to be healthy if means all that stress of SHOULD. how fucking boring would it be to live that way? you're so busy trying to be proper and healthy you have no time to LIVE. and fuck it all if life doesn't fly by fast enough on it's own to waste so much time on SHIT. pure SHIT. boring fucking life- getting up, going to work, checking off the list of should, and back to the beginning again. FUCK THAT.

knee jerk reaction was to walk away from all of it in a big pissy rage of FUCK YOU. 

then i stopped. and realized i was throwing the baby out with the bath water.

fuck. regroup.

look at it again. ok. so. maybe that list of 7 things is more of a sliding scale. we need all 7 parts to maintain a healthy self, but we don't HAVE to hit all 7 every single day. maybe it's more like a sliding scale of proportions-

yesterday i managed to hit 4 of the seven on the list and today was a pretty good day. today i've managed to hit 5 of the things on the list, we'll see how tomorrow goes, maybe it's only a 2 day. bottom line is i'm aware of all the pieces, aware of their importance, and aware that i need to make an effort to get to as many as i can. the world WON'T end if i don't hit them all. i'm not a failure as long as i keep trying and remembering they're there. the instructor keeps saying: imperfect actions. it's true. i'm never going to be the textbook idea of "perfect" but as long as i keep making imperfect actions i'm doing something right.

so that's something. i'm also learning to recognize each of the 7 parts and how to tell when one of them needs more attention or the proportional scale is getting out of balance. i talked to the instructor about it tonight- it's like a diet- you can eat all of one thing for a while, but eventually your body will tell you when it's missing/needing something. same with your mind- it will let you know when you need more in person connections, more sleep, more down time, more creative time, more physical time- AS LONG AS YOU'RE LISTENING for it. you eat salad for a week and suddenly you crave steak- your body is telling you there's a protein part missing. same with your mind- you can spend a week in intense work, or intense creating or only meditating- pretty soon you'll start to think maybe a night out is a good idea, or maybe it's time to take on a new project, maybe you'll be unable to avoid a nap- your mind will let you know how to balance out the scale again. 

so- learning not to knee jerk, learning balance, learning to tune into what's missing or out of balance. it's almost like i'm becoming a REAL grown up. scary thought, isn't it? those don't seem like BIG things, but they're already making a difference. there was also one other big break through about breaking patterns and learning how to get out of a rut i've been stuck in for the last...oh...15 years, but that's a whole other post after i've worked out a bit more of the grit on that one.