Accomplish Something, You'll Feel Better
Unrelated to blog topic: How long can you blame sluggishness on the time change? Just wondering.
Blog topic:
Have you ever been told, "East something, you'll feel better,"? I've heard this a lot, but unless you're out of fuel and your blood sugar is low, it doesn't apply (imagine a foodie saying that, but it's true). I now have one way and one way only to make myself feel better, now that I'm the grown up.
I hate to sound boring, and I'm not giving instructional tips on living - far from being that righteous - but I've learned that accomplishment is the key to me. And it hasn't been more evident since I have been set back since January, and I have had to focus more than ever to get even one thing done.
The kids keep getting sick. Seriously, since January, it's been one affliction after another. Baseball has begun again - I'm so happy - but I remember now the effort required in balancing multiple practices and games, not to mention keeping the uniforms clean, along with giving schoolwork it's due attention and priority.
The other stuff that would usually be no big deal - house painting, article querying, column formatting, window measuring, applying for passports - those are all time eaters when I am tending to sickies. Basing my end-of-the-day happiness score how much I got done is what I was used to. Living one day at a time is where I have been sent back to.
As Editor-in-Chief of Mom Writer's Literary Magazine, I read a lot of submissions, and one of them said "Some days all you accomplish is that your kids get another day older." I have had a lot of these days recently. My arrogant, even foolish, drive to check off as many things (and add more as I go along) from my to-do list might as well have been a letter to the Universe in red Sharpie marker, saying "Humble me!" and the responses I've received, in the form of signs, are everywhere.
Everywhere.
Yesterday when I took my two-year-old to the peditarician's office - I've only been there twice this week - I heard the receptionist saying two patients had to be taken away in ambulances (and I inquired, the kids are doing fine now). Wildflowers have sprung up all along the mountain by my home, so yellow and cheery that people are stopping their cars, getting out, and picking bunches for themselves. And although a string of bacterial and allergic bad luck has depleted our Health Care Reimbursement Account, we'ved dodged the worst case scenario bullet.
In exchange for relinquishing my idiosyncratic need for daily accomplishments, the Universe has given me some insight. I am surprised to learn pointed insight is not like a vaccine, sometimes more than one dose is required throughout development, even for the same issue. Humble me.
My accomplishment may not be in the form of a checkmark, but nonetheless, it's there.
So what I had planned for today - baking cookies as a thank you to the numerous doctors who saw us on short notice, finishing a column, writing a brilliant pitch to 3 different magazines, and folding/putting away 2 loads of laundry, in addition to other mundane struff - may have to wait.
I'm accomplishing me, I am doing what some divine entity thinks I need to be doing, and I have a long to do list for tomorrow and this weekend.
And thankfully, like my kids, I feel a whole lot better.
Blog topic:
Have you ever been told, "East something, you'll feel better,"? I've heard this a lot, but unless you're out of fuel and your blood sugar is low, it doesn't apply (imagine a foodie saying that, but it's true). I now have one way and one way only to make myself feel better, now that I'm the grown up.
I hate to sound boring, and I'm not giving instructional tips on living - far from being that righteous - but I've learned that accomplishment is the key to me. And it hasn't been more evident since I have been set back since January, and I have had to focus more than ever to get even one thing done.
The kids keep getting sick. Seriously, since January, it's been one affliction after another. Baseball has begun again - I'm so happy - but I remember now the effort required in balancing multiple practices and games, not to mention keeping the uniforms clean, along with giving schoolwork it's due attention and priority.
The other stuff that would usually be no big deal - house painting, article querying, column formatting, window measuring, applying for passports - those are all time eaters when I am tending to sickies. Basing my end-of-the-day happiness score how much I got done is what I was used to. Living one day at a time is where I have been sent back to.
As Editor-in-Chief of Mom Writer's Literary Magazine, I read a lot of submissions, and one of them said "Some days all you accomplish is that your kids get another day older." I have had a lot of these days recently. My arrogant, even foolish, drive to check off as many things (and add more as I go along) from my to-do list might as well have been a letter to the Universe in red Sharpie marker, saying "Humble me!" and the responses I've received, in the form of signs, are everywhere.
Everywhere.
Yesterday when I took my two-year-old to the peditarician's office - I've only been there twice this week - I heard the receptionist saying two patients had to be taken away in ambulances (and I inquired, the kids are doing fine now). Wildflowers have sprung up all along the mountain by my home, so yellow and cheery that people are stopping their cars, getting out, and picking bunches for themselves. And although a string of bacterial and allergic bad luck has depleted our Health Care Reimbursement Account, we'ved dodged the worst case scenario bullet.
In exchange for relinquishing my idiosyncratic need for daily accomplishments, the Universe has given me some insight. I am surprised to learn pointed insight is not like a vaccine, sometimes more than one dose is required throughout development, even for the same issue. Humble me.
My accomplishment may not be in the form of a checkmark, but nonetheless, it's there.
So what I had planned for today - baking cookies as a thank you to the numerous doctors who saw us on short notice, finishing a column, writing a brilliant pitch to 3 different magazines, and folding/putting away 2 loads of laundry, in addition to other mundane struff - may have to wait.
I'm accomplishing me, I am doing what some divine entity thinks I need to be doing, and I have a long to do list for tomorrow and this weekend.
And thankfully, like my kids, I feel a whole lot better.
