The First Steps

Today I took the first steps to refocusing myself.  Step one:  No. More. Facebook.  There are things I love about Facebook.  There's a support group for SM parents, and since there are so few of us, it's been very comforting and crazy informative.  I love keeping in touch with my cousins and other family members who live far away.  And I like keeping up with old high school friends, which is weird because most people want to forget high school.  But lately, Facebook makes me sadder than it does happy.  For one, friends I thought were good friends, are not.  Things I used to think they were too busy for in general turned out to be things they were too busy for just me.  It also fosters a false sense of community.  I'm "friends" with far too many local people who really don't care to be a real friend and I no longer have time for people like that in my life. And finally it makes me miss people, people who would be good, loyal friends again if I lived closer to them. But I don't.  So it's time to just take an indefinite break.

Second step:  Focusing on what I can control and letting go of what I can't.  I'm done with superintendent meetings and principal meetings.  It sounds like giving up, but it's not.  It's being realistic.  Without community support, there isn't much I can do and it's a huge expense of energy and emotions that could otherwise be spent on my family and myself.  I need to focus on cutting grocery expenses, for real, because that is in my control as much as I let it get out of control.  The other big thing I need to realize that is not in my control, and this is HUGE, is the state of my house.  My house is my refuge and I used to believe that it's one of the few things in my life that I can control.  I can keep it clean and nicely decorated, but I'm not the only person who lives here.  There are four other people and an old cat and an old dog.  They all have a piece of this house and render its overall state out of my control. I can focus on just a tiny piece of it at a time and I'm going to have to let the other stuff go.  Maybe then I won't have a major meltdown when my husband throws his nicely folded underwear haphazardly into a drawer--true story, it wasn't pretty.  And with that mindset, today I cleaned all three bedrooms in record time.

And finally step three:  Giving thanks.  I used to religiously write in a gratitude journal every night and for some inexplicable reason I stopped.  I write down five elements of my day that brought me joy or happiness. Sometimes it's big things, like my kids and husband.  Sometimes it's wrestling the dryer sheet out of the cat's mouth before he swallows it and then eventually barfs it up.  I record funny things the kids said or did, milestones they've reached, or the book I'm enjoying at the moment.  It ends the day on a positive and helps to drive out the negative thoughts.