Day 19: Procrastination Problems

I have been procrastinating writing for the past few days for a number of reasons.  I really want each and everyday to be a revelation, at least to myself.  I want to have something to SAY that shows that yes, indeed, I am moving forward and succeeding, but I get trapped in the mundane and have trouble finding miracles in the kitchen sink. 

I hate house work.  Anyone who has ever been to my house can see that clearly.  It's not that I don't know HOW to clean, I do, and I will shine the place up right nice when I get a hankerin' to do it.  But I hate the minutia involved in housework.  I want a nice, clean, organized environment but seriously, I don't want to be the one to spend the entire day standing at the sink to make it happen.  Call me selfish, call me lazy, call me negative but I firmly believe there was a woman somewhere who would have found the cure for cancer had she not been stuck in the kitchen scraping egg yolks off the fork tines.  One day, when I get myself even a little bit of money, I am hiring a house keeper. 

I know that all things in life are connected to the other things in life so I must sit back and reflect a bit to ask myself where this comes from and whether or not it plays a role where I find myself now.  I think one of the biggest things I hate about house work is that it is a thankless job that is never done.  There will always be more laundry and more dishes and more dust and more something.  Maybe it is the artist in me but I want to finish something and see it stay done.  Cleaning up the same messes make me feel even more trapped in the same loop I've been stuck in all this time.  It's not getting better, it stays at the same level of undone.  Does that make sense? 

Weight loss is the same thing.  Paying bills is the same thing. You do all the work and it's still never done, you got to do it all again the next day and if you (I) can't find a way to do it that fulfills, then it becomes drudgery.  I will never forget a moment I had when I worked at my son's daycare center.  I was the cook there and I enjoyed the cooking, I got along fairly well with my co-workers and I loved the kids.  But the job wasn't getting me out of debt, it wasn't even keeping my minimum payments on track and my son hated being there.  We had a particularly rough morning one day, snow on the ground and my son wasn't feeling well, and I remember standing at the back kitchen door watching the cars go by thinking, "We sure do go to a lot of effort to get somewhere that neither of us wants to be."  It was a turning point.  I don't want to live a life of drudgery to earn a paycheck to pay the bills that don't stay paid so I can have a house to sleep in before I go back to work to make the money to pay for the house.  It is insanity to me.  I've worked since I was 17, I put myself through college, I worked full time as a single mom for many years before I was laid off at the beginning of the recession.  I even went to grad classes part-time while working full time.  Lord knows I'm no stranger to a hard day's work and I appreciate and respect people who get up and go to work everyday.  I just think we are all missing out on something. 

I realize I am idealistic.  I acknowledge it is easy to sit back and wax philosophical about my earning potential with someone else paying for the roof over my head.  Trust me people, and many others out there can vouch for me on this, if I could pay for my own roof I'd leave here with my purse and the clothes on my back, shoes optional.  But I refuse to be exhausted, unfulfilled and stressed out about child care and travel if I can help it.  I tolerate too much as it is, I want what I want for a change. 

"Great," you say, "we all agree with you and wish you would go live your dreams so you stop complaining all the time."  Thank you for your moral support.  I suppose I am just having a difficult time laying down that foundation of success for myself because I have no clue what it feels or looks like.  Most people, especially the people in my immediate vicinity, are programmed to get a job that provides insurance, contribute to their 401K and hope nothing catastrophic happens between now and retirement.

I didn't go to college to get a job, I went to college to 1) get the hell out of my house and 2) to be something.  But I don't think I knew how to do that.  I didn't know how to be myself and I still struggle with that now.  I'm not sure anymore what is me and what is what I thought I should be.  I resent all the times I went on a diet or exercise plan because someone harped on me about my weight and I wanted to please them or get approval from them or at least make them shut the hell up.  I shouldn't resent anyone else for my own choices and reactions but I do and I am being honest about it.  I get pissed off when someone remarks about my 'potential' when they clearly have no clue what a struggle it has been for me just to get out of bed and deal with my life in its present incarnation.  I am to the point that I am leery of accepting a kindness from most people because, too many times in the past, when I've drawn boundaries for myself across the board, certain acts of kindness were held over my head from different people.  And that's just me being honest.  Emotions are not facts, though they often times bear the truth. 

So when you only half-way trust yourself and you only half-way trust other people where does that leave you?  Well...here, apparently. lol  And at the mercy of chaos and anxiety, prone to doubt and depression and anger that never gets resolved.  Speaking my mind often creates discord which I emotionally have a really hard time processing.  I grew up in constant tension and I f***ing hate it.  It infuriates me when my opinion is disregarded or morphed out of its original form or when I am labeled as stressed out or negative because I disagree with someone.  I have a long history of not getting along with Type A personalities because it drives me bonkers that someone in a room behaves as though their opinion or thoughts are the ones that should be heard and applied.  My own emotional filter reads their 'confidence' as 'arrogance' and I am set immediately on the defensive.

So I continue to try and figure out where that quiet place is, inside myself at least until I can find it externally, where I can trust who I am and what it is that I want and where I can let other people just be who and what they are without it compounding my own world.  I think we all struggle with this, some more than others.  I think if most people knew what it is I really think they wouldn't see me the same way ever again.  But that's a conversation for another time.

Sara Smile