Date Posted: July 26th, 2010
The Weekly Check-in is where I let you all know where I am on the path. “The Hard” is stuff I struggled with this week. It’s complaining except hopefully not as annoying. “The Good” is what went well this week. “The Learning” is what I realized this week. Learning could be related to The Hard or The Good but it might not be. The format is similar to the one FluentSelf’s Havi uses in her Friday Chickens.
The Hard
All of it’s related this week.
Bad Times in My Head
Depression. Guilt about depression. Shame for said depression. Believing my feelings are invalid. :-/ Not good times.
Is it over? It’s not as bad as it was over the weekend, but not sure it’s over yet. We’ll see.
Feeling a bit burned out on sewing
Mostly because I’m not sure I can get it and other things I want to do done in time. I can probably get the cotehardies finished, but the hose and the hood and the shifts… not so much. Unless I take time off work, which I can’t since I’m already going to be out of days due to Pennsic. Alas.
Not really able to enjoy my me time… even though I need it
Has to do with the burnout and the guilt. How can I be spending time on me when X, Y, and Z need to get done too?! Not that I have energy to work on X, Y, and Z. It’s just bad.
May have taken on more than I can handle
Gave up one SCA position for another. The other’s more aligned with what I want to do, but it may end up being more work than I bargained for. We’ll see.
The Good
Bweesness for Blogging
Last week I thought of a way to get some valuable experience for this blog. I’d love to be able to tell people to go out and start a business doing what you enjoy doing, but as of today I’ve never actually had a side business of my own. So, I think I’m going to start one… and blog about the experience. The one caveat being that I’m already feeling overwhelmed. How can I take on more?
Also that’ll mean my life will consist almost entirely of money making or potential money making activities. I don’t know how comfortable I am with that. :-/
Still this is a good thing. It’ll be valuable life experience if nothing else.
Chore Schedule
We have a roommate now, so we came up with a chore schedule with everything that needs to be done in order to make everyone happy. So far so good, although it’s only been up for half a week. Methinks think it’ll work, though, because of the accountability. I don’t want to frustrate both Aaron and the Roommate. 
The Learning
Sovereignty
Havi writes a lot about Sovereignty, and for a while I didn’t see the value of applying those ideas to my life. Respecting your capacity is over-rated. A lot of people do less than they are capable of. I don’t want to sell myself short. Etc. But this weekend I started thinking that respecting my current capacity to do things might be a good idea.
I have a hard time saying no to things I would want to do if I had infinite time and energy. So I say yes to positions, or go to events and then don’t enjoy myself because I really ought to be doing something else. At events I’ll often beg out early if I realize that’s what I did. I feel better afterward. Positions are a lot harder for me to quit for some reason. :-/
The thing is, no one is happy when I say yes to things I can’t really do or stay in positions I can’t do well. I just need to say something like, “I’m sorry, my intuition says that that’s not the right thing for me to be doing right now. Have Fun/Good Luck!” It’s hard because it’s rejection. I don’t like to be rejected. I don’t like to dole out rejections. But people still aren’t happy when I say yes when I really should have said no.
So, I need to figure out what my boundaries are. I have a lot of data to work with now. I should be able to come up with something reasonable.
Tags:
Career, Emotional Health, Stuff-Management.
Posted at
8:26 am | No Comments »
Date Posted: May 14th, 2010
So my new favorite blog is Havi Brooks’ Fluent Self. (My favorite because she explores ways to break through mental blocks about mindful business and marketing, things I’m dealing with right now.) She does a weekly check-in as a form of therapy and a way to let readers get to know her better, and I’ve decided to go ahead and try it too. Basically in the Check-in I go through what I’m working on, how I’m doing on it, and any insights I’ve gotten (or may have gotten). Here’s what I’ve been working on/dealing with this week:
Wedding
Oh man, this has been eating my time and energy. (In case I haven’t mentioned it, the wedding’s on June 6th. Less than a month away!) Some of the energy/time eating’s been due to worry. Some of it’s been having to face uncomfortable (but good!) things like writing up vows. Some of it’s been guilt at not having personally made much progress on the gowns in a while. (My friends have been incredibly helpful, though.) Here’s what I’ve learned:
- I have great friends. Seriously. They’ve been so helpful and supportive… in an unconditional way. I don’t know how to thank them enough. I don’t know the right way to say thank you.
- I don’t have this money thing down. This has to do with the “I don’t know how to thank my friends”. Part of me thinks I should give a cash gift to thank certain friends that have been over-the-top helpful. Another part of me thinks any gift I could afford to give would be less than what their work is worth. It has to do with the “No one Pays for Thanksgiving Dinner” problem. I want to stay firmly in “social norms”, but I don’t know how to do that. I’m sure they’d be alright if I didn’t strictly give anything, but I still want to. I just don’t know.
- I’m better at being a manager than a producer and I feel uncomfortable about it. When I look back on the past few weeks I haven’t made that much. I’ve made my hat, and I’ve attempted to make the hats for my bridesmaids, and even on those hats I’ve gotten other people to do significant parts of them. Things have been getting done, but I feel weird that I’ve mostly been in the position of “tell others what to do” or “tell someone they’re on the right track” more than I’ve actually been producing.
- *Whispers* I kinda like being a manager. Ok, I said it. It feels good to be in power. And scary. And guilt-inducing. “Only bad people like power.” etc. etc. But things are getting done… I’m just not doing them. No one resents me at the moment (except perhaps some family… but that’s neither my problem nor related to this issue) so I must be doing something right.
- It’s a good idea to not expect your friends to do anything. One thing is ask people to help but not expect them to come through. If they do, I’m thrilled. If they don’t, that’s OK too. This way I totally avoid resentment. Not everyone’s in the same position to give, and that’s alright.
- It’s hard to apply this to my family. All of us have expectations. And resentment. It’s not pretty.
Good thing: I think this wedding is going to happen. 
Yay!
Guilt
I’ve been afflicted with guilt since… at least elementary school. I remember walking to the bus-stop, worrying and feeling guilty about not having worked on homework that was due in a few days. My hope was that I’d do the right thing in order to avoid the self-punishment. It’s almost never worked, but I feel like there has to be some sort of consequence for me when I don’t keep my promises. I’m starting to see that this reasoning is flawed, but it’s a long-ingrained habit.
Here’s a list of things I’ve learned/realized about my guilt problem:
- I’ve been doing this for a long time. See above.
- I don’t know what a life without guilt looks like. Do I go around breaking promises all the time? With no punishment, why should I be good?
- Hey! That sounds familiar! It’s the “Without the Church people would lose their sense of morality” argument. That’s clearly false. “Good requires Guilt” is probably also false, maybe even for the same reason.
- Still don’t know how to deal with me not keeping my promises. The best of I’ve come up with so far is to:
- Figure out why I broke it.
- If it’s because it’s something I don’t actually want to be doing, I forgive myself and move on.
- If it’s for some other reason I first apologize.
- Then I do whatever I can to fix it.
So, in keeping with that. I’m sorry I didn’t update last Saturday’s post like I said I would. I’m not sure when I’ll get to it. Right now this blog is, sadly, not quite my top top priority. Aside from the obvious tops of Relationships and Work, Wedding comes first right now. Then Blog. Then everything else. I still want to edit that post because I want to improve my writing, but editing takes time and energy I have a hard time providing right now.
Not sure how much I like this method for guilt-dealing mechanism.
So that’s my check-in for this week. Methinks this will be a good way for me to get in my “one post a week” minimum (and let you get to know me a bit better).
Tags:
Character-Development, Emotional Health, Family, Leadership.
Posted at
4:26 pm | No Comments »
