Stop the World, I Want to Get Off

I am so done. Everywhere I turn I see stuff I'm in the middle of! I know it's all leading somewhere good, but I have to learn how to set limits.

I feel that I barely get time to rest before it's time to start up again. I miss my husband!! I haven't socialized with my friends in a while. My weekends are booked, my evenings are booked, my days are full, and I am pooped.

Everything in my agenda is something I want to do. My husband thinks I do a lot, meanwhile I look at my living room and see the mess I didn't clean up. Yet. And it's 1am.

I am really curious about how to change my attitude here. I can see that it's bad for me. Trying to do too much at once is such a pitfall for me. Sure, it's all good, fun, interesting stuff. But too much means I don't get to relax into each thing, because I have to work on whatever it is right now so that it's done in time. Too much means I don't get enough sleep, and that I feel stressed when I'm awake.

But how can I say no to a good thing? I seem to have no sense of time. All of you who have waited for me know that already!! But I mean a sense of time in a more transcendental sense. I can't set a priority, because I seem to see everything as happening all once. As though life is not a series of events, but a herd of buffalo stampeding over me. I see no cycles, no growth, only sudden and unexpected happenings.

Well, now that I write that, I realize I am starting to slowly see some cycles and some growth, but mostly I feel that I experience life all at once. It's really very tiring.

Help!

Microcosm of My Life

This week was really exciting, but also a bit overwhelming. I've set aside the first half of 2o11 to focus on myself... really focus on myself. It feels quite weird, from time to time, but my goal is get to know myself and to give myself a good foundation for the rest of my life.

For my inner happiness I am exploring interests such as personal training, learning French, and socializing more. I'm also working with a life coach, which I've written about here and here, to learn how to love myself unconditionally.

For my physical happiness I am working with a physiotherapist to get limiting pain under management so I can freely pursue my fitness goals. I'm seeing a massage therapist regularly to help with pain management, relaxation and recovery. (I don't think I've mentioned it before, but I have fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndromes. I am currently relatively asymptomatic, and I'm working on keeping it that way!) I'm also back lifting weights a couple of times per week, after trying to focus on aerobic activity for a few weeks and finding that it's still not my cup of tea! I've also started working with a Cesar-therapeut.

What the heck is a Cesar-therapeut? That's what I asked when my massage therapist mentioned it. Therapeut means therapist in Dutch, but that didn't really clarify anything for me. So I googled it. Ummmm. Yeah.

Bravely, based much more on my massage therapist's suggestion than on any understanding of what might happen, I made an appointment. I had my first visit last week. I have never heard of any practitioner in Canada doing anything similar, so I just have to describe it. Basically, a Cesar-therapeut works with people to improve how they move. They work with all age groups in lots of different ways.

After getting me to strip to my undergarments and submit myself to her steely gaze from all angles, my therapeut looked up from her clipboard and said, "Well, you stick your butt out, so then your belly sticks out to compensate, and then you hold your upper-back too far back to compensate, and then you have to round your shoulders forward to compensate for that." I'd been wondering why I've lost a lot of body fat but still had a sticky-out belly!!

In about 5 minutes she had me doing a couple of exercises to correct all of that, that I'm supposed to keep doing on my own. I found it very interesting because the point of the therapy is to get my body moving more naturally - rather than still moving the way I did when I was compensating for intense, constant pain during a two-year-long fibro flareup. And for me to do that on my own, rather than ongoing visits. She wants me to not have to come back at all!

Another new thing that happened this week was an invitation from my boss' business partner to set up a marketing planning sesssion for our gym with the key players at work. This came out of a bunch of marketing ideas I described for them, just for kicks, a few months back. They thought I knew what I was talking about and I'm now exploring a third role at my job! Receptionist, personal trainer, marketing dynamo!

I also ran 5 billion errands, counselled my husband who was really in quite a funk for a few days, worked crazy shifts and had a meltdown about feeling so full of enthusiam and ideas and so stuck on what to do next! Also about my work schedule for next month, but that I resolved by telling the colleague who does up the shift schedule what my limitations are going to be from now on. Assertiveness is my middle name. Ha!

So yes, my life is in a state of limbo, and it drives me nuts. I like to KNOW everything. I don't like plans changing, I don't like the unexpected, I don't like the unknown. But, on the other hand, I am absolutely sure that I am on a great path, that I have a great partner, and that no matter what the future holds, I will be happy anyways!

Does My Life Need a Coach?

I am generally a happy person. I laugh and smile and joke and tease a lot. Even during the happiest days of my life, there are always down moments, but they were generally short-lived. So, I was unpleasantly surprised when I found myself not happy for several months. From about August until just after Christmas, I was sad, angry, frustrated, and impatient.

Why I felt that way was situational, as I've mentioned in previous blogs. Basically, two women I had thought were tried-and-true, friends-for-life grew into people I didn't like anymore. I felt confused and disappointed that they were no longer who I expected them to be. I've also changed as well, and now I don't put up with conduct that I feel is dishonourable, selfish or unkind. So that meant, for these two women, that I had to stop all contact.

But it seemed to really trigger something in me. Those women have genuinely changed, and who they are now is disappointing, with values and conduct that I find weak and vain. Yet, although I found this whole experience distasteful, I was surprised that I found it so upsetting. That's why I felt it was a trigger of some sort. After all, I have 'lost' friends before, but it was never so bitter or unpleasant. It wasn't fun, but it wasn't so... painful.

People come and go in our lives, and people change. I expect that. I don't always like it, but I expect it. So for these two to change, and make their noisy exit, well, it's sad in some ways, but it's also an expected part of life. So what was so upsetting for me??

I couldn't figure it out. Part of it is definitely that I felt taken advantage of, that my kindness and generosity was accepted, but not my friendship. A little bit like in my dating days, if I was out with a new fella and knew it was not going to progress beyond dinner... I always paid for myself. I just never thought it was fair to let a man pay my way if I was just getting a free dinner out of it. If it was part of the getting-to-know-each-other process, part of developing a relationship, or part of an ongoing relationship, sure. But if I realized I was in it only for the meal, I would never let someone pay for dinner when I can pay for myself. So in a way, I guess I feel that I was that poor guy, thinking he's in a relationship and paying for his girl, when the girl is thinking, you better be paying, sucker, and I'm ordering five courses!

And the more I thought about that, the more I realized that I have become more and more someone who is caring towards others, but less and less someone that puts myself first. I love to be caring. I love to help people if I can. I don't want to lose that. But man, I gotta put myself first. I want to learn how to see my own needs more clearly, and to go out and take care of them.

So my MIL suggested I check into a workshop on self-confidence. I asked for a bit more help, and she sent me a couple of links that she found and told me what to search for. (Keep in mind I live in Holland, and even though I am officially fluent in Dutch there are a lot of specific words or phrases or expressions that I don't know. So knowing what to look for was pretty handy!) I checked a couple out, most were quite expensive or inconvenient to get to. I emailed a couple with a few questions.

Later that day, Marloes Elbrink from Stekker Coaching called me in response to my email. I was on my way out so we made an appointment to speak the next day. The next afternoon, she asked me some pretty specific questions to find out what it was I was looking for. She told me that Stekker Coaching wasn't offering any workshops for a couple of months, but she thought that working with a Life Coach might be effective. She invited me to an intake-appointment to see if Life Coaching might have meaning for me.

I decided to take her up on her offer. I'll tell you all about it later!

Tired Tired Tired

I'm really tired. I've been getting up this week with J, and most days going to the gym for the 9am class. I've also been going to bed with J.... far far too late.

I hate going to bed by myself. I just lie there, alone with my whirling thoughts. At least when J comes to bed, we talk for a little while, and that seems to take the edge off the sharpest thoughts. I still don't fall asleep until at least 30 minutes after he does. Which is really quite annoying.

I need quite a bit of sleep. If I get good, uninterrupted sleep, I do great on about 8 hours. But that's counting after I fall asleep. Currently, I spend at least 1-2 hours just falling asleep. And usually my sleep is at least somewhat interrupted. I have to pee, or I am in an uncomfortable position, or I have nightmares. The nightmares aren't all that scary, just very stressful. Last night, one that I remember was I had used a public bathroom (not the stressful part yet) and went to wash my hands, but motor oil came out of the soap dispenser. And someone said they were going get more soap, but never came back. Very stressful.

I wonder how to improve being able to fall asleep. I'm tired, don't get me wrong, I'm probably over-tired by the time I get to bed. Hmmm... maybe that's it! Go to bed when I'm tired, before I get exhausted.

I'll try it.

Excitement in the air!

I was just whining about how sucky things are because I am so moody and frustrated lalala... but I have come up with some pretty cool ideas about what I can try to break this sucky pattern!

First of all, the new year is coming up, and as I was shopping for a new appointment book, I found one called "Coach Jezelf Naar Succes" (Coach Yourself to Success), and that's the one I picked! It's full of practical questions and exercises that I find both lame and interesting. I tend to be a bit dismissive of thinking exercises, because thinking is easy for me (yeah, I'm that smart lol!) But it's the application of new habits, or at least trying on new habits, that has me intrigued. I am very curious about what I will learn about myself...

One thing I seem to have just recently learned is that my mood is negatively affected about 30 minutes later after eating deliciously chocolately goodness. Sigh. I only had half of the piece of cake, but I must admit, it was a very large piece to begin with! I also notice that drinking lots of water has a positive effect on my mood. I've read that drinking a lot of caffeine has a negative effect on your body, and I drink black tea like there's no tomorrow... I don't know if I am willing to cut it out, or even back, that much. On the other hand, as an experiment, it might be worth it.

I'm also going to work on loving myself. I already know I'm a great person, but I feel as though I want others to like me too much. If no one else but me in the whole wide world thinks I'm fantastic, then I want to be satisfied with that. How's that for a goal?

So, we'll see if some changes in my diet, and (sigh) my attitude will bring happiness a little closer to me on the sofa of life.