My apologies for not finishing any of my five hundred blog drafts. And apologies for this particular post not being anything you will want to read, seriously.

I'm a little tense, feeling like I'm falling down on my job(s). Not getting everything done or really much of anything lately. I'm feeling a little emotionally drained from the family emergencies and some of the "feelings" it dredges up with me -- my role, who I am in the family; I'm always the one who lives far away and works too much. My mom lives alone so having her break her arm to the point of requiring surgery and an overnight hospital stay is a pretty big thing, especially when it then falls on my sister's shoulders to drive her around and take care of her after she JUST had her appendix taken out in emergency surgery herself, and has a barfing baby and husband to take care of, too. it's a real triple whammy. I tell myself I shouldn't waste my free ticket by getting stressed out over things I can't help, but it's happening anyway. There's been some other stressful stuff going on too, but it's a little too personal to go into right now.

Needless to say, the Thanksgiving I was so looking forward to has to be postponed.

At least I'm doing a good job with my exercise goal this week, having gone three days in a row and will go on Thanksgiving too to meet my goal. I am in such poor shape that my body is pretty tired, though; I need a few more consistent gym days to get to that point where I have MORE energy instead of LESS after exercising.

When I went out to "take care of" my sister over the weekend, I saw she'd purchased the Lord of the Rings dvd set. She said it was her five pound(s lost) reward to herself. I said "huh" to myself, and realize that I do a very totally fucking shitty job of rewarding myself when I finish things. I'm great at making lists, halfway great at checking them off, but I totally drop the ball on the reward/pat-self-on-back step. I imagine that I do congratulate myself and give myself internal warm fuzzies, but they only last half a second and then I'm already choking up on fifty other listed tasks/goals/whatevers I want to get on to. Taking time and energy for proper praise and reward seem so inefficient to me!

It's not that I deprive myself of happy treats and moments of luxury, I just don't take the little bit of extra effort to TIE treating myself to finishing something or meeting goals. I'm going to try to do that more often. Today I decided that whenever I manage to talk to my mom on the phone, I'm going to reward myself with 15-30 minutes on the Playstation (I hate talking to my mom on the phone). I also decided I'm going to give myself a fucking break and allow myself to focus on this exercise task this week and be proud of myself for meeting my gym goal REGARDLESS OF WHAT OTHER THINGS I DON'T GET DONE. My health is pretty fucking important, and seeing what my mom and sister are going through with their own hospital visits really should bring that home to me, especially considering they have insurance and I don't. What could be more important than me taking care of my body?

We also met our goal of not watching tv today. My natural reaction to that statement is that meeting the goal should be its own reward, but then I think I'm slacking again by not really patting myself on the back harder over it.

I'm going to go stretch and hit the mattress. Hard.

Labels: family, goals, health, mundane, relationships

posted by Trixie at 11/20/2007 11:23:00 PM -