Man, today has been hard. After work I had the choice of either going shopping for much needed clothes or going straight home to do laundry. It was a toss up for me because I hate both equally as much. But I decided it would cut down on the amount of stress in the mornings if I got some of the laundry situation under control. We have baskets and baskets filled with clean clothes as well as closet fulls of dirty laundry . Unfortunately, tho, as soon as I got home I became exhausted. I had zero energy to draw upon to do what I had planned so I just sat on the couch constantly nodding off just waiting for it to be 9pm so I could put the kids to bed.
This whole situation felt pretty bad to me. I felt guilty the whole time I was nodding off on the couch. I kept fighting back the urge to call myself a failure. I kept having to take deep breaths to calm my chest. It was just not a pleasant time. I felt like the exhaustion had more to do with procrastination than it did a real physical state. I didn’t understand what the issue was. I kept wanting to blame Dennis for half this mess. I’m not a housewife, afterall. Rattling in my head was a lot of “why should I feel like it ALL rests on my shoulders?” The thought made me angry. There might be some truth in that which I may have to address at a later time, but I think the main reason I was even thinking it at that moment was avoidance.
And a more important question I had rattling around that I thought should be answered first is this; Why was I able to clean half the bathroom without choking but now I can’t even fold laundry at all? Why does laundry seem too overwhelming to cope with right now?! The first tangible difference is that I gave myself easy todo’s with the bathroom: “put towels in basket”, “grab cleaner and scrub sink”, “sweep floor”, etc. Easy. And there isn’t much thinking left to do when it came down to it. Tired or not, I knew exactly what I had to do and each task literally only took minutes or even seconds. With the laundry, on the other hand, I didn’t give myself any written todo’s. It was just one big fat mental todo that went “Do all the laundry”. “Do all the laundry” is a pretty big undertaking and it can be broken down into too many pieces spanning over days, so expecting myself to “Just tackle the monster” wasn’t fair on me at all. Why hadn’t I made a list when the bathroom list worked so well? Habit.
So I fired up Things and instantly identified my mental block. Monster obstacle #1 (aka todo #1) for me is where in the hell am I going to fold the laundry? The usual place is stacked with toys and clutter. The kitchen table has computers and mail on it, the couches are not at all a comfortable place to do it. So…. I choke. I dont’ know how to move forward! Any ‘normal’ person would just throw a clean bed sheet on the bed and do it there, but not me. It takes me hours to come up with that one. I have become a chronic procrastinator; a professional choker; a queen of inaction and it’s going to take a lot of sweat to break thru that existence. This is what I face.
My brain is battling and undermining itself at every turn. Throwing wrenches at its own gears as a form of self punishment. Not fun.
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