It’s been a relatively difficult month for me. It seems like for about a month now, I have just totally dropped the ball. I have been forgetting things (desserts at family dinners, mascara on only one eye, etc), activities (taking a meal to a woman who’s just had a baby from the church), unable to sleep at night and suffering from really bad headaches. In talking with friends and thinking back, it seems that it started when I found out that a friend of mine had cancer. Thank God her surgeon was able to remove it all and she is fine now, but it threw me, and I am just now realizing that it threw me a lot harder than I thought it did.
Our life is busy, and full of things that I can’t “cut out” of the schedule. I am normally really organized and the only way to thrive with our calendar is to be very scheduled. My husband thinks I’m crazy and my mother thinks I’m a control freak, but the truth is that our family would not function without a schedule. The problem is, I dropped the ball and it’s taken me a month to get it back.
I haven’t had a panic attack since 2003, but last week I felt very close to having another one. I don’t suppose myself to be a very important person, where the world will stop if I don’t get my stuff done, but in my world, I’m in charge, you know? Everything was jumbled. The only time I remembered to do anything was when someone reminded me that I had forgotten to do it. My to-do list was looming over my head but I couldn’t think clearly enough to get it onto paper. I am the kind of person who has to see it for it to stick with me.
I have finally figured out my problem, though. I think I need to take the “schedule” one week at a time, instead of thinking in terms of months or seasons. When I look at everything at once, that is when I stress. When I take it a day at a time, broken down into daily tasks, however, it doesn’t seem like so much to do.
There are a lot of things I have been putting off because “I haven’t had time”, like finding a general physician, getting a physical (never had one in my adult life), going to the dentist (it’s been two years), going to the eye doctor, and more recently, going to the chiropractor. I am at my wit’s end with not sleeping and these headaches, and I have tried everything. I am hoping the chiro can help me with that, and I go this afternoon for my first appointment. I also have a great new workout plan put in place by my brother-in-law, but never have time to go to the gym (literally, pretty much every night of the week has us being someone other than home), therefore I don’t lose any of the weight I still carry from being pregnant, and therefore I am tired and feel bad about myself. If I look at this list that I have been putting off, everything on it has to do with me taking care of myself. Maybe I feel so drained because I neglect my health.
So, yesterday I decided that enough was enough. If I have to take it a week at a time, so be it. If I have to take some sick leave to get doctor’s appointments in during the day, so be it. If I can get to bed early and actually fall asleep with enough rest to make it to the gym before work, so be it. I went to Target and bought a whiteboard. It is weekly, so I can only see my to-do list for one week at a time. This should curb the panicky feeling. I got some different colored markers and assigned a color to me (pink!), Ryan (blue) and Aubrey(purple) so I can look at it each day, see the pink tasks and know what I have to get done that day.
When I got back to work from Target, I googled some tips and then I brainstormed some ideas and things I had to do this week:
Seeing that stressed me out. It’s so jumbled and disorganized and made me feel like I couldn’t possibly get it all done. But then, I put it on the whiteboard:
Now, that doesn’t look life-sucking to me at all! It’s basically one or two things a day that I need to do. It is so not overwhelming anymore, and I really think this simple change is going to make a huge difference. For one, by the end of the month I will have all my checkups out of the way for a good year or so (except for the chiro). I know I need to just bite the bullet and get it all done now so I don’t have to mess with it. It might not be the best idea to run around so much for the next week seeing the chiropractor, dentist and general physician, but at least it will be done with.
It’s a small change, it’s a baby step. But now that I know I can take this one step, I see the possibility of more steps. I feel like I imagine Aubrey did when she realized that she could get herself from where she was to where she wanted to go. I’m sure it won’t always be as easy as buying a whiteboard, but with God’s help and the accountability of friends and family, I am starting to think that I just might not be crazy after all!
