30 days of lists - days 9-12

Carrying on with the catch up theme, here are the next 4 days of 30 days of lists.

Day 9: Weird stuff that makes me cry. 

Someone asked me why the Melbourne Cup makes me cry. I know there is lots to dislike about the racing industry and most horses are not as lucky as these elite racers, but there is something that really moves me seeing these magnificent animals give their all in such a huge race. I loved watching Makybe Diva race and I think I cried every time she won.

Day 10: Meaningful gifts given or received.

• Photo shoot and photos (coordinated by Lil Sis) for my parents' 30th wedding anniversary.
• Engraved cake knife for Juniordwarf's first bithday
• 40 years album for Slabs' birthday
• Brooch Slabs gave me for our 10th anniversary
• Everything Juniordwarf makes for me

Day 11: This was meant to to be "things my family taught me" but I decided to make it more relevant to me now, and included my (work in progress) list of 12 commandments, as inspired by Gretchen Rubin's Happiness Project.

Day 12: Favourite things about this month - which could be this month to date, or this month in general. I guess I included a bit of both

Happiness is not a destination

When walking past a shop recently, I glanced into the window and saw a poster with this quote on it:

Happiness is not a destination.
It is a way of life.

It sums up the attitude I’ve been trying to instil in myself.

Last year I blogged several times (here, here and here, for example) about my realisation that ‘life is now’. That means that I can’t wait until I’ve ‘fixed’ the things I think I need to fix and until everything is perfectly in place before I start living my life (my life is now) or before I can acknowledge that I’m happy.

And as I walked, I contemplated the quote (for which I have tried to track down a source, but I've been unable to do so) and it occurred to me that this was not just a quote about happiness. It could actually be applied to any number of things that I’m trying to address in my life.

Try replacing the word ‘happiness’ with ‘health’. 

Health is not a destination; it is a way of life. 

Of course it is. For a long time I’ve focused on an attempt to ‘get healthy’, which implies that there is some point at which the unhealthy me will suddenly be the healthy me, after which everything will be easy, I will never crave chocolate again and I will only drink two glasses of alcohol two nights a week.

I know that's not going to happen. There's not going to be a flick of the switch moment, when I suddenly become healthy.

So if I see health as, instead of an end point that I have to reach, a way of life, then the challenge is no longer to get to 'the end' (to get healthy), but to live a healthy lifestyle (to be healthy).

Instead of complaining that I’m overweight, unfit and unhealthy and telling myself I have to lose weight, get fit and get healthy, I choose to be healthy today. And every time I have a choice, if I choose the healthier option (herbal tea instead of beer; going for a walk instead of watching TV; fruit instead of cake) then I’m reinforcing being healthy. (OK, not every time. I think that’s unrealistic. But most of the time.)

Sure I might have some specific goals*, like I want to be able to run 5 km or I want to fit into my pre-pregnancy jeans**, but those goals are not the end point. They are milestones. Am I unhealthy because I can only run 4 km***? Do I suddenly become healthy once I can run 5km? Of course not. There is no end point. You don’t just achieve your health goals and then stop and go back to your old ways once you’ve done it. Health is not a destination; it is a way of life.

I feel much better for starting to live this way of life.

Something else that has been a big focus of my life and that I’ve blogged about several times could also slot right into this quote, and I’m sure there are many others too. But that’s a story for another night.

* Not my actual goals.

**That would be the immediately pre-pregnancy size 8-10s, not the 12 months pre-pregnancy size 14-16s, because fitting into those would require a certain level of relaxation of my lifestyle; and besides, I got rid of them and have no intention of ever buying a pair of jeans that size again.

*** I can’t.

the star chart (and weekly check-in #2)

Let’s talk about resolutions.

Well, actually, since this is my blog (and my weekly check-in) I’m going to talk about my resolutions.

Or, more accurately, my commitments. I decided to call my resolutions ‘commitments’, because to me ‘resolution’ conjures up something you come up with for New Year and, more often than not, fail to keep. I know – the two words are most likely interchangeable and I’m just playing with semantics here, but if I’m going to be more likely to stick to a commitment than a resolution, then I’m using that word.

But first, a recap of what I’m talking about.

In January I wrote about resolutions in the context of The Happiness Project. Basically what Gretchen Rubin did in an attempt to make progress towards reaching her goals was to make resolutions related to those goals that were ‘concrete and measurable’. She then made up a chart to record those resolutions and included space for each day, where she would tick the box if she’d fulfilled the resolution and cross it if she hadn’t. (The Happiness Project, page 8.)

The idea behind this is that if you put the chart somewhere you can see it, you’ll be reminded of what you’ve set out to do, and if you record your progress, this provides a degree of accountability and encourages you to keep going.

For her Happiness Project, Ms Rubin selected a different subject for each month (such as ‘work’, ‘money’, ‘friendships’) and then set herself specific, realistic tasks related to those subjects, which at the end of each day she could assess whether or not she had done.

Each month she added the new month’s resolution’s to the previous ones, so that by the 12^th month, her intention was to be keeping all of her resolutions every day.

So, having explained all that, it's back to me.

A couple of weeks ago I posted how my first commitment was going to be to make sure my kitchen benchtop was clean every evening and that all the washing up was done and put away. 

It’s a fairly simple task, but it’s something that, by the time we’d done everything else we had to do once we got home – especially on the days when we pretty much got home and went straight into dinner – I was often in a state where I couldn’t be bothered to finish. I’d do the washing up and leave it in the drainer, I’d leave things on the bench that I wasn’t sure when I’d be needing next and I’d leave the stove to be cleaned until I next needed to use it.

The result was being greeted by an untidy kitchen first thing in the morning, which set me up for being in, well, an untidy mood for the rest of the day.

So I decided to start to make a bit more of an effort, and to make sure that I did, I made my own version of Ms Rubin’s resolution chart. It looks a lot like Juniordwarf’s star chart for the little tasks we were having trouble getting him to do, and is going to need some resizing pretty soon, once the number of commitments gets much bigger.

Yep it's probably a little bit childish, but there is a certain satisfaction in doing something I said I'd do, and seeing my chart fill up with stamps. Juniordwarf is quite amused by it all too. But if it works, then I'm not complaining.

Last week was my first full week trying to fulfil this commitment, and this week was my second. My first weekly check-in was here, and I committed to coming back every Sunday night and reporting on my progress, in an attempt to hold myself accountable. By that I mean I hope I’m less likely to give up if I’ve made a public commitment to doing this stuff (even if only one person reads it).

Ok, I can’t put it off any longer . . . time to report.

Kitchen bench: 7/7 stars.

Bed by 11pm: 3/6 stars (I can’t count tonight, since I haven’t gone to bed yet).

Drink enough water: 7/7 stars.

Next week’s new commitments

This is going to be tough. The commitment is to get up and dressed by 7 am every day.

Not difficult on a work day because I get up well before then. But on weekends and on my day with Juniordwarf, I tend to lounge around for a long time before I get dressed, I don’t actually do anything during that time and I waste a lot of the day. I’m hoping that the act of getting myself ready for the day will move my mind into an action frame of mind, rather than a sloth one.

Also, if I have to get up earlier, this might help me stick to the 11 pm bed time, which I did well at the start of the week, but lost it at the end of the week.

Maybe I should make it 8 am on a Sunday though.

Weekly Check-in #1

Remember my post a couple of weeks ago in which I made a commitment to myself to wash up and clear off my kitchen bench every night?

Well, it's not much good making that sort of commitment unless I have a way to keep myself honest, so I made myself a version of a star chart to keep track of whether I've actually been doing what I said I would.

And to keep myself more honest, because I made a public commitment to doing this, I've decided to have a weekly check-in post every Sunday night so I can celebrate my success (or admit my not-quite-success).

So, where am I up to?

Week 1: 5/5 possible stars. A good start.
Week 2: 4/7 possible stars. I didn't quite get there.

Next week's commitments
1. The kitchen task remains.
2. I will be in bed by 11.00 every night.

The reason for making this commitment is that I simply am not getting enough sleep. I'm run down and sick all the time and I need to rest. So I'll see if this makes a difference.

I'll be back next Sunday night to report on my progress.

P365 - Day 145 it's all too much

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about how I’d come to the realisation that ‘life is now’. It’s not something that happens once you’ve worked out what you want to do and how you’re going to do it. Although I was feeling pretty unwell that day, I appreciated having some uninterrupted time to think about things and be a little reflective for a while.

I came up with the ‘life is now’ mantra, which I think I’ll turn into a nice wall plaque or something for my crafty space to keep  it at the front of my mind.

After that day, I had a couple of ideas about what I needed to do and where I wanted to go from here and I was feeling quite positive about it all.

Only real life interfered and pushed all that stuff to the back of my mind, where everything that is ‘on hold’ sits.

Right now it seems to me that I can’t even do the simplest thing to make my life easier, and that I’m hell-bent on sabotaging everything. I don’t have time, I don’t make time and I can’t be bothered anyway.

I’ve lost count of the number of time management, how to prioritise, how to get things done, how to manage your life, secrets of organisation books and websites I’ve looked at, how many times I’ve seen a great idea and thought I want to do that, how many times I’ve started something that’s fallen by the wayside . . . you get the idea.

Every time I see a new book or a new website, I think, yes this is the one that is going to work for me. And what happens? I read the book, print out all the worksheets, start to fill them out, maybe even start to do one or two things, and then it all gets too hard and I slip back into my old ways and life goes back to normal.

I don’t know if it’s because my life doesn’t immediately change as a result so I don’t think the strategy is working, or if it’s because it’s just so hard to break an old habit and replace it with a new one.

(I know, I know! It’s flawed logic. You don’t put on that extra 15 kilos overnight, so you can’t expect to lose them after one session at the gym.)

Here’s an example of what I mean: I want to drink more water during the day. I make it as easy as possible for myself by taking a full water bottle to work so I don’t even have to go to the water cooler. And still some days that bottle can sit in my bag, right next to my desk, all day without me having a single drink from it. I don’t think I could make it any easier, unless I got one of those beer caps with the tubes running straight into my mouth.

So if I can’t do something as simple as drink water, what hope do I have of doing anything that actually will get me to where I want to be?

I’m feeling quite disheartened about it all.

All I can think of is that for me to be able to work out where I want to go and how I’m going to get there, I need to get out of the real world for an extended period, sit down and work this all through. I can’t do it while I’m tending to my day to day responsibilities. It’s too much. I don’t have time.

A week in a secluded retreat, with no phone, no contact with anyone, days to think and write, quiet uninterrupted nights, blissful silence. Wouldn’t that be great?

It would, but it’s never going to happen.

Still I keep thinking to myself, if only I could somehow get to that place, then I could sort myself out and things would be better. I could work out which dreams I want to pursue and which ones aren’t me any more.

The result is I don’t do anything, and things stay exactly the same, and I keep wishing they could be better.

This week, however, I’ve read two things that give me a glimmer of hope that I might be able to find a way through it.

The first was a comment in (yet another) book about decluttering (from Simplify 101), which was the very simple and very obvious premise that you have to actually do something. All the reading in the world won’t help if you don’t get out there and start doing it.

That is: to create change, you must take action. Or in motivational speak ‘if nothing changes, nothing changes’.

And to do that, you have to make a commitment to take action, and then do it. And doing it once and sitting back and thinking ‘that’s it’ doesn’t work either. You have to do it again the next day, and again the next day.

It’s not rocket science is it? And I bet every book I’ve ever read says the same thing. I’ve certainly heard it many times before.

But what am I going to do? There’s so much I want to do, so much I need to do and so much more I don’t even know that I want to do yet. It’s all too much. I really need that week-long retreat to work out what I want to do, so I can work out where to start.

Really?

Since the retreat is not going to happen, at least not now, if I want to do this stuff (a lot of which is just vague ideas of future plans, goals, dreams and hopes), I have to do it within my day to day life. That is, now.

I actually have to make time to do it. Gretchen Rubin came to the same realisation when she was embarking on her Happiness Project. 

And since changing everything at once is way too much (and I don’t know what ‘everything’ is that I want to change yet) and is completely unachievable, I need to take one step.

I need to make the time to take one step. Surely that’s not too hard.

And here’s the second thing I’ve found helpful. An email from the Planning Queen (aka Nicole Avery, who runs the Planning with Kids blog and has just released a book called Planning with Kids).

She said what she did was focus on the things that made her grumpy. Being grumpy was making her day worse and dragging everyone else down too. But if she could find the things that triggered her grumpiness and work out something she could do to deal with those triggers, in a 15 minute timeframe, which would be manageable in a busy day, she wouldn’t feel so overwhelmed or be as grumpy.

One of her examples was not having cluttered bench tops.

I totally relate to that. Just the fact that the benchtop is cluttered seems to make me (more) tense and anxious. It makes preparing meals more difficult and is a particularly unpleasant sight first thing in the morning, when I’d rather still be in bed. Looking at a clean benchtop is somehow calming. It makes me feel like things are under control, even if they aren’t.

Cluttered benchtops are definitely a grumpy trigger for me.

It seems to be a common thing among organisation books and websites that clearing your benchtops (and kitchen sink) at the end of every day is a great first step to making your life more manageable. I made one of my resolutions earlier in the year to wash up and clear up every single night, and I stuck with it for a while, then it fell away.

So today I’m returning to that resolution. It’s the one thing I commit to do every day, starting today. I will do it every night immediately after dinner or, if I’m putting Juniordwarf to bed, as soon as I’ve done that.

This is my first step. It’s action.

And to make sure I stick to it, I’ve made my own version of Juniordwarf’s rewards chart. I made a resolution chart earlier in the year as part of my Happiness Project, but I always kept it in my journal or somewhere else out of reach and always forgot to look at it or update it.

It’s now in full view. I hope this will make me more accountable and that by taking this first step, I'll be inspired to take the next step.

P365 - Day 129 happiness, what? (9/5/2011)

Today was a day of rest for me. After thinking on Saturday I’d recovered from what I thought was a pretty run of the mill cold, I spent yesterday feeling rather unwell. I got up this morning to go to work, had a shower, realised I was never going to make it and headed straight back to bed.

In between resting, sleeping and making myself hot lemon drinks, I watched a DVD that I’d got ages ago and had never watched. It was a live concert of Kate Miller-Heidke in San Francisco, which included a documentary made by MTV EXIT featuring Kate. The documentary, Rise: A Tough Ascent is about the lead up to a concert in Nepal for the MTV EXIT campaign to raise awareness and increase prevention of human trafficking in Nepal. It included stories of women who been basically tricked into leaving Nepal to become prostitutes in India and had managed to escape.

It’s quite a disturbing subject, and while I was watching it, I started to put my own problems, if you can call them that, into perspective. I wondered if I was plucked out of my relatively comfortable life here and dumped in a village in somewhere like Nepal how I would cope. Or even if I’d cope.

I wrote down a lot of rambling stuff trying to sift through the actual point I was trying to make. There was stuff about ethical production, exploitation, the true cost of things we consume, rising costs of living here, people in Australia trapped in cycles of poverty and no education, what are we going to do when the oil runs out, my life could change at any time . . . what’s the point?

I concluded that I feel like I have a responsibility to make the most of my life right now. That means not waiting around for things to be ‘right’ before I can start to ‘live’ my life.

Life is now.

What I am doing right now is living. I remember reading somewhere someone had said that there is no dress rehearsal.

This reminded me of something I’d read in The Happiness Project, and since I’ve been thinking about that a bit lately, I decided to grab it from the bookshelf and re-read it. And there is was, in the very first section, the same realisation:

‘Bogged down in petty complaints and passing crises, weary of struggling with my own nature I too often failed to comprehend the splendour of what I had.’ (page 2)

There are lots of things in my life I wish could be different. Some are within my control, some are not. However, the mistaken belief I seem to have a lot of the time is that I can’t be satisfied or totally happy with my life until I’ve changed all the things I want to change. That is, I can’t really live my life until everything is perfect.

But while I’m waiting for my life to be perfect, my life goes on. I’m wishing some things were different but I’m not doing anything about them, and at the same time I’m not really appreciating the things I do have.

And that’s the point of the Happiness Project – it’s about appreciating the good things that make up your life right now, but also finding out what will make your life happier and then actually doing those things.

For me, the first part is just as important as the second. I don’t want to waste my life living for the day that everything falls into and my life is magically a life worth living. Because I don’t think that day will ever come.

I’m fortunate to live where I do and to have what I have, and I owe it to myself to make the most of this and to live the best life that I can. But at the same time, what I’m doing right now is living my life, and I need to take the time to appreciate that as well. Life is now.

There.

I don’t think I’ve worded that particularly well, but I’m not feeling the best. I’ve had a lot of stuff going round in my head today and I needed to get it out.

So tonight – or what’s left of it – I’m going to settle down with my copy of The Happiness Project and work out what my first step is going to be. I’m not going to aim for a grand life plan because I’ll never get that done, and if I wait for that to be finished before I do anything I’ll achieve nothing.

But I can set myself a goal for tomorrow.

P365 - Day 124 milestone journal

I mentioned Gretchen Rubin’s book The Happiness Project earlier this year. It’s a great book and I’ve been following Gretchen’s blog for a while, but have to admit that I haven’t been putting a lot of the strategies into practice.

One idea I recently came across on the Happiness Project blog was the ‘milestone journal’. The idea is basically that you get a nice book, have a page for each day of the year, and then every time something significant or really important happens in your life, you note it down, and the year, on the page with the corresponding date.

That way you have a record of all the really big moments of your life.  

According to Gretchen, there are studies that show that one way to increase your happiness now is to reflect on happy memories of the past. She suggests this as a way to keep that information all in one place so that you can easily remember what happened ‘on this day’.

I rather liked this idea, so I’ve decided to try it out.

Being the lazy creature I am, I didn’t fancy writing the date on the top of 366 pages in a notebook, so I looked for an ‘Any Year Diary’, which has done all that work for me. (It's a pretty unattractive book, so I’m planning on making a nice arty looking cover for it, and will possibly use some of my scrapbooking stash to make the pages look pretty. However, this is apparently the only one of its kind available. It’s obviously not a particularly sought-after item.) 

It brings back memories of the little lockable diary I used to have when I was a kid - without the lock.

Now my only decision is whether to start it from now, or go back through my old journals (which I’ve been keeping since I was about ten) and fill it up with significant moments from my whole life.

I think that would be kind of fun to do.

P365 - Day 51 - it's been one of those days

One of those days when I wish I’d never got out of bed and can’t wait to be over.

It probably didn’t help that I didn’t really get up. I did that thing where I stay in my PJs, laze around, do a few incidental things, have too many coffees and a late breakfast, and generally act like a sloth.

Eventually I decided to tackle a project that has been sitting on my lounge room floor for several weeks. All my old photos are either sitting in those bad self-adhesive albums that we all know are a no-no for photos or stashed in shoe boxes.

I had decided to buy some archival negative sleeves and photo boxes so that I could keep them, if not in perfect condition, at least in better condition than under the spare bed. So they arrived a few weeks ago and I made a start on pulling the photos out of the albums, putting them with the rest of the photos from that film and matching up the relevant negative strips.

Fun, not.

Doing this was one part of the larger project to completely declutter the junk room study and make it a useable space. However, the study/spare room/library/however you describe it is somewhat overgrown (a bit like the back yard) and so there wasn’t enough room to do this in there, so out to the lounge room it all came.

And as I was hunched over all these photos and negatives on the floor, trying to work out which photos went where, and which negatives belonged to which photos it all became too much.

I should be doing this stuff on a decent sized table where I can actually spread stuff out and see what I’m doing. How am I supposed to ever get this done? It’s just too hard.

And I went into the study and had a look around at the mess in there and all the stuff we didn’t get rid of in the garage sale and wondered how the hell am I ever going to do this. I need to clean up to make space, but I need space to be able to clean and organise.

My logical mind knows that I just have to keep plugging away even if it’s only one shelf, one drawer or one piece of the floor. (Incidentally, as I was writing this, I was browsing some of my favourite sites and, by happy coincidence, what should be the topic of the day on the Happiness Project but fighting clutter one shelf at a time.)

But even if I do this, the trick, and the hard thing for me, is once a space has been cleared to keep it that way. And if other stuff doesn’t have a proper home, it will make its way back to my nice clear area.

So the problem really never goes away! I have to stay on top of it all the time or everything will go back to the way it was before.

And after my little meltdown, I didn’t really feel like doing anything else for the rest of the day. I’m sure it was compounded by the horrible weather, which has just arrived out of nowhere, especially the wind, which was really grating on me today. The noise was really getting to me and it seemed to amplify everything else that upset me today.

So I spent time with Juniordwarf, tried not to feel guilty about the lack of progress today and put it down to being one of those days. Tomorrow will be better.

P365 Day 13 - walking the dog

One of my Happiness Project resolutions has been to walk for 30 minutes each day. Ideally with sleepydog.

Over the holiday break, we had family visiting, we over indulged somewhat, and I'm still having trouble getting back into some kind of normality (aka routine). This week I finally got my act together and started taking sleepydog on her walks again.

It's been hard. The temptation to relax on the couch with a refreshing beverage is strong. But I knew that every day I put it off, the less likely I'd be to get back into it.

sleepydog loves her walks, but she's pretty worn out when we get back.

P365 Day 9 - I wasted time (9/1/2011)

John Lennon once said, ‘Time you enjoy wasting was not wasted’. I don’t know when he said it or the circumstances that he said it in; whether it’s one of his lyrics or something he said. But I don’t really care where it comes from – it’s a view I subscribe to.

Today I wasted time. I really did.

I had a lot I wanted to do this weekend, most notably clear up the piles of clothes on my bedroom floor that have sat there, unsorted, since we put the new wardrobes in after Xmas.

I also had to find the power cord to an air cooler that we’re hoping to sell at a garage sale, but without the cord it will be useless. I had this niggling feeling I’d thrown it out in one of my decluttering frenzies (these are few and far between).

So with all this stuff to do and, with the memories of recently viewing ‘The years are short movie’ fresh in my mind, also wanting to spend some quality time with juniordwarf, what did I do?

I slept in (or, as sleeping in with a young child is not normally possible, I stayed in bed late). I stayed in my PJs until after midday. I fiddled with my blog unnecessarily. I posted photos. I read other people’s blogs, I tweeted, I facebooked (if that’s actually a word).

This is all stuff I love doing. I enjoy it. It’s not wasting time.

But all the time I felt guilty. juniordwarf was happy doing his thing, and I kept taking breaks to spend time with him. We listened to music, we built towers, we looked at photos and we discussed Captain Janeway’s hairstyle.

But I still felt guilty. The pile of clothes continued to haunt me.  I felt like I was leaving juniordwarf to entertain himself too much, I was spending far too much time in front of the computer, and I had no idea where the bloody cord was. The more I thought about it, the more convinced I was it had been tossed out with a pile of other superfluous cords.

I felt like I was wasting time. And because I felt guilty, I wasn’t enjoying the time I was ‘wasting’, so it really was wasted time.

Part of a Happiness Project is to make resolutions. Not vague resolutions of the New Year’s variety that you stick to for a week and then give up, but a

commitment to concrete, measurable actions

The Resolutions tool is the most important tool in the Happiness Project Toolbox. It allows you to commit to a resolution in writing and to track your progress. Frequently reviewing your resolutions keeps them uppermost in your mind, and scoring yourself gives you visible feedback. One suggestion: by framing a resolution as a concrete action ("Rent a movie once a week") instead of an abstract goal ("Have more fun") and by holding yourself accountable, you're more likely to make progress. 
(from http://www.happinessprojecttoolbox.com/resolutions.html)

The basic tool to achieve this is a chart for each month (I love charts!) where you record each resolution for that month, and tick off each day (or fill in a square, or however you do it) if you’ve kept the resolution for that day.

I realised that there are days I spend a little too much time on the computer doing stuff that’s enjoyable, but not essential, at the expense of spending time with juniordwarf or doing things that really need to be done (the pile of clothes continues to spring to mind).


I wanted to minimise this as much as possible, so my original resolution was to not turn the computer on during the days I’m at home with him (a ‘concrete action’).

However, I quickly figured out that this wasn’t a realistic resolution. Some days I’d need to turn it on to write a letter (yes, sometimes I write letters, especially to places like banks and Centrelink, but as my handwriting is so bad, they have to be typed in order to be understood), check email, or whatever. Sometimes I’d want to grab a few moments of ‘me’ time and hang out online.

I don’t have a problem doing that. I need 'me' time - everyone does - but I do have a problem with the fact that I find it too easy to go on the computer for one thing, then get distracted by other things online, chatting with people, following links, looking at photos, and before I know it, an hour has passed.

I don’t want to look back on juniordwarf's childhood and remember it in terms of time I spent on the computer. I want to remember things we did together, fun we had, stuff we both learned. I want to be fully present with him for the time that I’m with him. Yes he needs to be able to entertain himself, but he needs time with me too. I don’t want him to look back and remember his Mum as someone who spent her life in front of a computer screen.

I can’t be fully present with him if I’m doing computer stuff.

So in a long-winded way, that’s why I feel like I wasted time today. Sure I got some computer stuff done that was nagging me, and I also had fun with my boy. But I could have had a whole lot more fun. And most, if not all, of the computer stuff could have waited till later.

After all of that, I think a more realistic resolution is to maintain a balance between doing things that have to be done, making time for myself during the day doing things I want to do without feeling guilty, and being an engaged parent.

The balance will be different every day. Some days juniordwarf might prefer his own company more than mine for a lot of the day – and that’s fine. Other days he might want to spend a whole lot more time with me – and that’s great. I’ll have to rely on my own feelings about whether I’ve achieved the balance each day – it’s not something I can measure. It's not a 'concrete action', so it's probably not a 'true' resolution. But I hope it will work for me.

Today the balance I wanted to achieve wasn’t there. So there’s no tick in today’s resolution box. But tomorrow is another day. And I resolve to do better tomorrow.

Oh and I found the cord. It was in a cupboard in the laundry in a spot I never look. I think this means some further decluttering may be in order.

Resolution anyone?

P365 Day 2 - love you forever (2/1/2011)

juniordwarf asked me to read this book to him today.

It’s a story about a mother who has a baby, and it tells the story of the baby growing up, and at every age, despite all the frustration he’s caused her during the day, the mother holds him while he’s sleeping and tells him she’ll love him forever and he’ll always be her baby. When the little boy becomes a man, his mother is old and dying, and he holds her and tells her he’ll love her forever and she’ll always be his mother. Then at the end, he goes home and does it all over with his new baby daughter.

I only got onto the second page when I started crying and I barely got through the book. I can’t even write about it without tears coming to my eyes.

My beautiful little boy asked me if I was OK at the end of the story when he saw me crying, and then he cuddled himself up on his little couch as if he was upset too. I felt so bad that I’d upset him as well.

I didn’t know how to explain to him why the book makes me cry. It’s just so beautiful, and a reminder of how much I love him and how none of us lives forever, but that the cycle of life goes on.

(The frustration that the mother feels as her little boy is growing up brings to mind a quote from Gretchen Rubin’s Happiness Project: ‘the days are long, but the years are short’.  It’s something I try to keep in mind when things start to become difficult. He will only be little once and I can never get this time back again.)