creative.mother.thinking

So thanks for putting up with me whining last week.

While I still haven’t cleaned the house in any way (it got so bad that my husband vacuumed on the weekend which is telling), things are starting to look up.

I’m getting a little of my oomph back. So I have been able to power through the running intervals (this really was starting to get ridiculous), and I have been better at doing the daily maintenance stuff, I even managed to do the dishes before going to bed twice last week.

And there will be a glorious weekend with nothing on the agenda (apart from starting Camp NaNoWriMo yet again, and the yearly Tour de Fleece of course). At least we’re not spending the whole weekend biking through the rain, attending a party and sleeping in a tent which were our original plans.

Binge eating has been a little more controlled, and beer consumption is a little down. I still feel somewhat paralyzed, and I think it’s a combination of stress, attempting to finish novel three of the trilogy, and heat.

Teaching seems to pick up again which is good, and one way or the other I will get back to writing and revising.

I keep thinking that it’s important to share the lows along with the highs because otherwise you’d think there are people who have everything under control without ever slipping up. And one starts feeling like a complete loser if there is backsliding.

But I’ve come to reailze that backsliding is inevitable and something to plan for. And then you pick yourself up again, and you realign your goals and you change tactics, and then you start again.

And some day it will all come together and work.

But never for long.

But that’s okay because then we just change tactics until it works again.

So you might remember me being all enthusiastic about getting up at five and finally moving forward on all my goals.

Well.

That didn’t last long.

I never managed to go to bed early enough, and so I didn’t have any energy, of course, and then we had that big performance, and I moved my sleep schedule back to normal, and then I just couldn’t get back into the groove.

Plus I still felt weird about the whole affirmation-thing.

Since I wasn’t getting anything done, and since I was still so tired that I was binge-eating almost every night I decided that getting enough sleep had to become my top priority. So I’m going to bed some time between 9.30 and 10 at the moment, and then I sleep until I wake up or until 6.30, whatever happens first.

And I’m back to my old routine of only writing in my journal when I have some extra time before getting up, and of meditating and writing on my novel right after breakfast. The bad thing about this is that I often don’t want to write because I never know when my husband will be getting up and coming over for breakfast. As I’m writing this it’s 8.45, and he can be here any moment. It could also be that he will show up at 9.30, this makes my mornings a little unpredictable.

But I decided to be cool with this and to just move things around as needed. Yesterday he was up real early but then I sat down to write at noon, something I never do. And it went well. But it was hard too.

I’m not back at a point where doing the things I want to do every day feels in any way easy. Sometimes I doubt that they will ever feel easy. I’m probably doomed to be a person who has to force herself to do the dishes every single time. Which does become a little exhausting. I seem to be a person full of resistance every single step of the way.

Like with running. I am right in the middle of doing a Couch to 10K-programm. I have now done week six and seven three times or so, and I still don’t manage to run for longer than two minutes at a time. Each time I vow that this time I won’t give up early, and power through. And each time I have some stupid excuse that I just can’t go on. It is too hot. There is someone with a dog, and I don’t want to run when the dog can see me because I’m afraid it will bite me. I have to walk so I can listen better to my podcast. Also it is way too hot.

And every time I swear to myself that this time I will run all three minutes, every single time, and then every single time I don’t do it. And every single evening I solemnly swear that I will brush my teeth right after dinner and get ready for bed, and not eat any chocolate or almonds or peanuts, and then every single day I find myself sitting in bed eating and feeling miserable. Mind you, I also feel miserable if I don’t eat chocolate, that’s why I do it, at that moment it feels better to eat and at least have that little splinter of pleasure instead of not eating. The only problem is that that makes me gain weight again, and I don’t like gaining weight either.

So I guess I have to learn to be just a little harder to myself. Because trying to feel good and comfortable all the time makes me really miserable in the long run.

So I’m trying. Every single day, and I’m failing. Every single day. And I’m running out of patience with myself but I still don’t want to give up.

Because that would be the alternative. Leaning back thinking, „Oh, I’ll just not write a novel than, no problem.“ and „Oh, I just get back to walking, who needs to be able to run?“ and also, „Well, I guess I’m just not cut out to be a slim person, people in my family have always been a bit on the chubby side.”

Which would be perfectly alright. Because many, many people would be happy having the life I have even without the writing and the running and the being thin.

Only I wouldn’t.

And that’s my dilemma.

I know what I need to do in order to be happy but I don’t do it because it doesn’t feel good while I do it.

So. What do you do when you find yourself in a situation like this? Give up? Try harder? Something else?

and I feel like I am in a transition period again because two days from now our son and I are going to visit my parents for a week.

I’m pretty busy because I had wanted to finish the rough draft of the current novel until yesterday (which didn’t happen), and also I still need to sew most of the clothes I want to take with me. Which is completely reasonable.

See, the weather will be wet and hot while we’re at my parents, and I don’t have anything I can wear. I still haven’t bought myself new tank tops, or shorts, or even t-shirts. I do have enough fabric for a knit sundress, though, and I found that if I alter my denim wrap skirt, and finish hand-sewing the tank top I started last year, and sew elastics in a pair of leggings that are almost finished I will have enough clothes to last me through a week with the weather we’re supposed to have next week.

Of course I could have finished all these things sooner but I needed to also record the English episode of the podcast, and publish it, and today I will have to record the next regular episode of the podcast – so that I can stay within schedule – and that makes the whole thing a little harder.

And then our son and my mother-in-law decided to start taking the old furniture in his new room apart, and though I didn’t know anything about that beforehand I still felt compelled to help. I’m pretty proud of our son, he worked like crazy for hours yesterday, and only hit himself with a hammer once. His finger will be fine in a few days.

Of course the weather at my parents’ will be worse than here at home. At least now it says there will be lots of rain.

And traveling always throws me completely off so there’s that.

Well, I still have an hour until dinnertime so I better get started on all the sewing, don’t I?

So the concerts went well, and we’re trying to get back to our routines and normal life. But it is harder than we thought.

I did expect to be exhausted and not good for much for most of the week, but I didn’t expect to feel completely limp and faint for the whole week. Friday was the first day I felt almost back to normal, but only almost. And my husband has felt the same.

So I spent most of last week basically doing nothing. A little knitting, a lot of reading, and not much else. I didn’t even go for runs, and had short walks instead because I felt so low on energy. I did sleep a lot, and set my alarm for 6.30 instead of 5. Turns out that eight hours of sleep is my limit these days.

But today I have decided to go back to normal. So I set my alarm for 5.30 (didn’t want to go overboard), woke up at 5 and did my morning routine thing. Now it is 6.20 and I’m writing this. I’m hoping to get back to writing my novel soon, hopefully after breakfast. So far this morning I have opened the document and stared at it for five minutes. I have no idea what will happen next, and am hoping that my subconscious will work that out while I’m having breakfast.

The downside of the concerts being over is that now I should have way more time and energy. And I should be able to do everything that has been left undone for the past two years.

But of course that’s not how it works, isn’t it? I’m always hoping for vast amounts of time to open up and then they never do. But my list of things to do is really long. I still want to declutter. I stopped a few weeks ago and haven’t gotten back to it. I still want to sew all the things. I still want to finish the weaving projects that have been lingering for years.

When I look at all of that at once it’s really overwhelming. My husband is almost in a panic right now because there is so much to do in the garden, and then he wants to practice all.the.instruments, and there is a lot to work on in the house as well. And I can totally understand him because I feel the same.

Of course there is only one thing to do. Take a deep breath, make a list, and work on it, slowly, one thing after the other, not stopping for the next few months. And at the end the house will be decluttered, our son will have a newly renovated room, we will have our living room back – mold-free – and there will be fresh vegetables from the garden. Only it won’t happen all at once.

But the novel will get written, and the instruments will get played, and our lives will become a little calmer. I hope.