I still can't believe I'm reading a self help book. With that preface, it is helping...my self that is. He comments that we often feel helpless because we don't accept adult responabilities like making appointments or managing our time. Now this spoke to me. I have yet to make Dr.'s appointment for the girls. And Piper really needs to go to the dentist. I hate doing stuff like this. I don't know why. It's not hard. I just hate it. And as I was reading I looked around my bedroom. It's total chaos. There are papers I want to file all over the floor. Most of them have been there since December '06. And my whole house was like this. There are stacks of stuff everywhere. Clothes hanging off the back of chairs, books in piles on every surface, bills to be mailed stacked on the bar. It's pretty bad. And it makes me antsy and anxious. So I asked myself as I read this piece in the book "Why don't you do something about it?"
And I went through a bit of a whine. Well that's "general" talking I said to myself. Deleuze would find that repulsive. It's all about the free flow and embracing the chaos. And I stopped myself. I was using a theoriest to justify my mess? A mess that makes me unhappy? Ok I thought, what's really going on. I think some of it is that I don't want to grow up. I still want to be that college student from 7 years ago. The one without kids who stayed up until 3 am and then slept until 11. The one who smoked, drank, and lived on coffee. But she's gone. And the body she once inhabited lives with three small children who need a grown up mom not a college student. And I thought about those wierd feelings I have where I feel like I'm "playing" at having a home. It's like I'm a little girl playing house with dolls.
And the thing is that my life has changed but I've not fully kept up. I continue to think of myself in terms that don't make any sense.
So I decided that I HAD to schedule. That if I was going to homeschool which I really want to do, that if I am going to graduate school (which I really want to do as well) then things were going to have to be a bit more ordered. So I got Sunday and finished cleaning. We went out to eat (I have lots of frozen Margaritas) and then I came home, and set up a skeleton plan for Umberto's schooling next year. I watched the Rollins' Show and then the rest of "Volver" and went to bed at 11. Then I got up at SIX. In the morning. I can't remember the last time I saw that time of day.
I'm not going to say I liked it. It was rough. I listened to the Pixies on the way to work. That woke me up...well that and having to drive very defensively as the idiots rushed to work. By the time I got to campus, I actually did feel pretty good. I get a lot more done when I wake up this early. I do feel energized, and I realized that when I get really sleep at four, I can exercise which always wakes me up. But I still think that six is much to early. Piper loved it by the way. She's defintely a morning baby.
We'll see how this goes. This time I'm not thinking that it will be perfect right off. I know that I'll have to tweak the schedule, and that there will be days when it all goes to hell. But I'm prepared for that, and I'm not going to see it as a failure.
Okay now off to do what I'm supposed to be doing...
5 comments:
I hope you don't mind an old fart giving you advice you didn't ask for, and probably don't need. But I'll risk it. One step at a time, one step at a time. Don't change everything at once. That's a sure recipe for digging a hole of self-loathing after you fall short of reaching all your goals. (How do I know this? let me count the ways ...). Waking early is a good start. Of course that means changing the bedtime routine to ensure you get enough sleep. So that's two things. What if you do those two things, and one other will all the extra time, say, remove some of the clutter, just a little bit, say 15 min worth, every day. In a week or two your house will be clean. Or work on the home schooling schedule, and when that's set up, then work on the clutter. Then you can move on to other things.
You do know that in the real world Deleuze led a very ordinary life, don't you?
Oh trust me, it's very slow LOL. There is still lots of clutter. I just did basic cleaning Sat. and Sun. And you're right.I have to slow myself down as i tend to get all gungho, and then just drop everything. So thank your for the reminder!
With the homeschooling, I did good by just doing a general outline that has lots of loose ends. I tend to want to overdo there and overdo quickly. When it doesn't happen, I get discouraged and let it go. This time I'm taking it slowly.
And I did hear that about Deleuze.
I can totally empathise with feeling out of step with your own life. I've spent the last few days marking work and giving final grades for my class. There's not way that I feel responsible enough to be a teacher, even though I've been teaching on and off now for a year at the college (it's more like a community college than a university), and I spent a year teaching at a high school a couple of years ago. Looking after kids always feels strange - I'm not sure anyone really knows what they're doing. It's like things grew up around you, and you have to rush to keep up. I don't have kids, but even so I feel as if my life grew up around me as I have a teaching job, bills to pay etc. I feel like I'm play acting as a grown up... I spoke to an old friend in the week just gone who laughed out loud when she heard I was teaching. She couldn't imagine me being responsible.
La Rouchefoucauld said that we arrive unprepared for each stage of our life (rough translation of 'Nous arrivons tout nouveaux aux divers âges de la vie' - or at least that's how Lawrence Durrell quotes it).
Jon
Jon,
I taught for three years at a high school, and there were times when I would just shake my head at the increduality of it. I so didn't feel like I was "adult" enough to teach. And I was 30 at the time!!!!
And no we're not really prepared. I alway feel like I'm running to keep up...
Well defintely slow steps...as an update...I got up at nine this morning not 6:) But I did call and make Dr.'s appointment for the kids.
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