Independence. Yesterday got me thinking a lot about this word. Last year I taught civics to a group of my students and renewed my knowledge of the basics of the creation of our country. I struggle with where we are now compared to what our Founding Fathers had in mind when they declared independence from the British. It has been challenging for me to listen to news and current events with this in mind.
Back to my goals. Yesterday was a good day. I got in some quality time wiht my son after giving myself permission to complete tasks that I was working on without feeling guilty (this was the 'do one thing for me'). I often get this feeling when I am cleaning up or doing things other than playing with my son. I don't know what makes this happen to me so often, but I have difficulty allowing me to do things for myself as well as things that needed to be done without this feeling of guilt.
Yesterday, the nagging task I completed was the cleaning of our pool. Honestly, thinking about nagging tasks, this is pretty recent and not really a high priority, but in order for full summer enjoyment, I needed to clean the pool. And it is ready to go!!! Today I have yet to complete a nagging task, but I have had a great day. We went to the park this morning, then did some more work to have our pool toys all ready. We had an afternoon swimming, went on a walk, and a bikeride.
I continue to work on restoring order in my house. I have been a little obsessive about cleaning throughout the day and maintaining order. My son and I completed the "evening clean-up" together these last two nights. I feel as I make more progress towards bringing my house in order, I feel better and better. I have a long way to go, but by doing a little every day, I am seeing progress.
Yesterday, it was evening before I got to a "clean my closets" task. At that point, I did not want anything to do with going through things, so in the interest of following through and creating a routine, I chose a stack of magazines that has been sitting in my room for about a year that needed to be gone through. Part of the problem is that I do not want to throw out magazines or other things because I "may need them someday," it is ridiculous and has created an overload of things I don't want to get rid of. Tonight I have done the same thing. I have a pile of magazines that need to be gone through. From what I did last night (and what I will do tonight) I have been pulling out my favorite article or two from the magazines. Now, I know this is not much better than what I was doing before, but to me it is. I have to start making steps that are managable enough to be continued and not set myself up for failure. This allows me to keep some things, but to get rid of most of the pile. With the ways I justify keeping things, I have found it helps me to take multiple runs at things in order to get to what I want to keep the most. My craft room is definitely the most overwhelming room in the house, mostly because of the reasons that I keep things that I tend not to use again. I had a friend who came over recently who (after I apologized for my messy room) told me that it was 'an organized mess.' Ok, that I can work with...
My level of activity has increased since beginning. I started with some exercises that I have completed three days in a row (counting today). I added some more in yesterday. Today, since the pool was ready, I had about a half hour of aerobic exercise in the pool. I have not gotten my run in yet, but today's aerobic workout was a step in the right direction.
I am really glad that organization and parenting are in different months, because of the amount of front-loading I have to do with organization in order to get to a point of maintainence. I feel confident though that in a few more days I will be far enough along in order to pull back a little.
Until tomorrow...
Amanda :)
No comments:
Post a Comment