Controlled Chaos

I am about a month into keeping a Sabbath. The only rule that I have stuck with has been no school work on Sundays. I had told myself no facebook, computer stuff or TV watching (all which I have violated). I have begun to loosely translate my Sabbath as doing things that I want to do; not what must get done or I feel obligated to do. If I want to sit on my butt all day, so be it. If I want to accomplish many things around the apartment, so be it. I have also told myself to write on Sabbath days. To sit back and reflect/comment on life. Not just go through the motions of life, but to stop and think about what is going on in those motions. That is where the title of stress/time management has come in. I don't feel well. I don't feel exactly sick, but I don't feel 100%. Physically I am exhausted, feel run-down and have a nagging sore throat. Emotionally/Mentally I feel overwhelmed, unsuccessful and incapable of turning this around. Which is odd, because just a couple of we...

Things are going to get personal, y'all. When my family comes up in conversation, I have a way of introducing them to strangers. I have a saying, "They put the fun in dysfunctional." It isn't always fun to be a part of my family. We aren't very good communicators, we avoid conflict like the plague, many of the women are controlling and manipulative and we hold grudges. I saw a therapist in college, because it was free and I recognized that I didn't want to bring my dysfunction into other relationships. I am most grateful to the therapist for two things: 1) She didn't allow me to blame people and 2) She taught me how to deal with my emotions. When I find myself ______________(insert emotion), I ask myself two questions: What am I feeling? What do I want? It doesn't sound life-changing, but it was to me. I had never learned how to process my emotions, they were always buried, repressed and "Carlsons don't talk about that stuff."...

I know what I want my life to look like, but I don't know how to make it happen. I want it to look like a Pottery Barn catalog.  Something that is a character flaw of mine, is that if I don't get something right the first time, I have a hard time wanting to keep trying. But life takes persistence. It is a very daunting idea to keep attempting to do what I want to do over and over again with the history of failure at my previous attempts. How does one truly acquire the "try, try, try again" tenacity for life? I am happy and extremely blessed by the life that I have. I do need to stop all of my bitching about desiring Real Simple and Pottery Barn to be my life because that makes it so that I diminish what is good about the here and now.  Perhaps as part of giving up on complaining is to focus on being grateful.  Grateful list for the day:  1. Oatmeal and lazy Saturday mornings.  2. Sunny neighborhood.  3. Great church home.  Now to enjoy sunny, hop...

While cleaning in the kitchen today, I came to the realization that cleaning gives me a sense of control. This realization caused me to figure out why I love Real Simple so much. They offer solutions for how to gain control of everything. I would weigh less, be prettier while living in an organized, creative and beautiful house if I followed Real Simple's simple suggestions on how to make dinner in 30 minutes, exercise in 15 minutes and have my makeup on in 5 minutes. Geez, I could accomplish those three things in under a hour.  But I don't have my life that put together. I don't know anyone who has that. It is a lie, but a beautiful one that part of me gets excited about typing the fact that those three things could be done under 1 hour.  I have always been perplexed by control. Sunday school taught me to feel guilty over wanting control, that we are to deny ourselves and take up the cross. That we are to wait on God's timing and His plan, we are to submit to His wi...

I don't want to do a damn thing. It is a Monday evening, an end of a long day. A long day that is the beginning of a long week. Sometimes I question if I am cut out to be a teacher. It is exhausting. I have decided that for my sanity that I need to do nothing. I need to do things that remind me that I am something else besides a teacher. Careers are overrated. Just saying. When I decided that I should write tonight, I felt like I had a lot to say. Perhaps it was simply that I am taking a stand for my sanity. That has to be a positive. Things I am grateful for today: 1. Basil being excited to see me when I came home. 2. Amazing CTA karma this morning. 3. Supportive administration. 4. The sound of Tyler's voice. I will not give up hope on myself. Life gets done one way or another, so I am going to continue to learn to accept how I go about doing life.

I was doing alright on writing during Lent, I need to find my focus on it. What is the value of writing for me? It gets my thoughts outside of my body. Is that valuable enough for me to invest time into it? Yes. I am a person who things bottle up inside of. It isn't until I am at a boiling over point, that my internal issues get expressed. Writing consistently would help me to decompress more regularly, and perhaps diminish the need to run over. I have found in my life, both personal and professional, there are things that I know and then there are the things that I practice. There is a disconnect between the theory/ideas of my life and the actions of my life. It frustrates me. It frustrates me because I feel like a failure because I do not have stuff figured out. I don't like feeling frustrated. I don't like feeling like a failure. Perhaps I am too black and white with my outlook on myself. Just because something wasn't executed perfectly, doesn't make it...