Hooray for Friday, for those of you who only eke out the most important parts of your existence on the weekends!
My car is finally towed to the mechanic, even though through this period of practicing avoidance, I’m not going anywhere outside of doctor visits and taking the kids/doge to the park.
I want to make Friday’s fabulous!
A while back I ran into an awesome email newsletter that helped me form some of the first coping steps in dealing with days when I felt, and felt I looked, like utter crap. This newsletter was Flylady’s, and the most important tips I ever gleaned from taking her email newsletter “course” (free!) were these, and they have turned into a decade long set of habits I try to enable in my daily weekday life.
Number One – Every day after you’ve woken up, even if you aren’t leaving the house, dress down to your shoes. (The shoes is important, showing you are ready and able to go outside or go somewhere at a moment’s notice. That you care about yourself enough to look good and feel ready for the world.)
Number Two – When in the midst of a messy, unorganized home, go shine your sink. Shine your sink when you are finished with it for the night. It does wonders for your sense of self-satisfaction.
Her newsletter was the first time I found something useful when endlessly searching on the internet for ways to improve myself and my ‘lot in life’, and we’re talking me being 19 and living with my parents and taking classes at a community college. For so long as a teenager I knew things weren’t right in my childhood home, but this was the first time I’d really encountered the outside world and saw more of what “normal” meant. I went to a boyfriend’s house for sex and “Kill Bill” when his parents’ weren’t home. There were family pictures on the wall. They had a dishwasher (and I’m not talking about his mom!), the floors were mopped. Shiny. They had an island in the kitchen. Their curtains were open and all this delicious addictive sunlight poured into the house. Lit it up like a small paradise.
Now, this boyfriend and I didn’t work out because I was desperate for anything to love me because I’d tried in vain for my mom to just like me, anything, and my mom doesn’t have the emotional capability to even love herself. I’ll always be in a process of making peace with my mother’s complete lack of parenting and social skills. It was too much for a 19 year-old volunteer firefighter.
But when I felt in his parents’ house during those stolen moments was this sense that this guy was deeply loved by his parents, that they did things together, they kept everything in their home running optimally. They seemed altogether more cohesive, and I’d not even met these people!
Looking back now, I do realize with seven billion people on the planet there are scores upon scores of different family units, socioeconomic status, personalities, and situations, so another thing I’ve been reconciling is my idea of what “perfect” is and accepting anyone and everything as different and beautiful and normal. The idea of building a shrine to expectation is a surefire way to ensure it’s status above all else one values in life. It will be untouchable, and you destroy relationships and opportunity, and yourself, as you continually attempt to emulate this ideal utopia and your head and consistently find your needs are not being met.
It’s all about radical acceptance, and then learning what is in your circle of influence and control.
But, that doesn’t mean that while we accept the way things are, that we can’t take certain things and work on them to develop better habits to move towards a more obtainable goal. And that goal is: Better.
Don’t shoot for the moon, just shoot for “better than it was three months ago.”
Don’t quit smoking, but try for a while to challenge yourself to smoking only 7 a day, something along those lines.
For my jumping the Career Ship and swearing off working in IT, with all my anger, my bb and I have decided that instead of throwing away an opportunity for me to excel at one of the things I do best and make money while doing it and also enjoying the work itself, I’ll spend a couple hours a week reviewing IT documents and books and keep information and changes in tech ‘fresh’ in my mind. No commitment to going back to work, but just moving to a goal of not losing all I’ve worked for, including the college I’m still paying off.
Because something bad happened at my last job doesn’t mean I should play the Avoidance card the rest of my life. Honestly that’s admitting defeat. That is allowing fear to take my life over. I’m happy as hell to be enjoying my artistic and musical talents, trust me, but my husband and I are a team, albeit we share a unique situation in our marriage. He works very hard for us, for me, for our kids, for my brother’s kids. He does so much. And one of the things I’ve learned being married to him is marriage isn’t a status. I’d be just as happy divorcing him. It wouldn’t matter. We are the team.
Marriage is a lifelong adventure, and as long as he and I keep aiming not for the utopia, but for simply making life ‘better’ for each other and the kids, we can’t fail.
So there I am, shining my sink and dressing down to the shoes, reading up on my tech stuff, helping him certify in a new tech certification, and making jewelry and painting and singing and playing video games with my son.
This is temporary. This crunch on income is temporary. We have our whole lives ahead of us, this is a bump in the road, and my marriage and family and myself are more important than allowing fear to keep me avoiding the things that can help me to make all of those things…. better.
And I love myself, and she deserves better.
So let’s just aim for better.
PS – My dog and I picked my hubby from dropping a car at the mechanic’s today! He wore sunglasses and was content as a peach in a peach tree. As you can see up there, he is fabulous, and makes me feel like a fabulous Dog Mommy!
