Controlled Chaos

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...

Life has been business as usual Post-Easter. I am not sure if that is comforting or alarming. I am still obsessed/guilt-driven about not being productive. I don't want to move so fast. I don't want to have so much responsibility. But at the same time I don't know if I would know how to function without responsibility and life going crazy. I feel so weird, because I am constantly conflicted about this. Slow down, but do lots. How can I just be? How can I let myself be at peace with "que sera, sera"? I need to figure out this grown-up stuff. I have a lot of time to figure it out, but I don't necessarily like feeling that I suck at it.

It is Easter, but I am uneasy. Holy Week was wonderful, don't get me wrong. The experiences that have had the most significance for me was the watch in the garden and the stations of the cross. It could be because this was the first year I have ever done these two things, but it gave me a new way of experience the Passion. I am uneasy because of going back to work. I am uneasy because I didn't quite accomplish all that was on my To-Do list. But life does go on, I am not dwelling so much on the fact that it didn't get accomplished. I am realizing more and more that life can seem like one big, never-ending to-do list. That is where the dread of going to work tomorrow comes from. Because I do not get to sleep in to 11 am and ignore the mountains of paper work. It must be faced. And new things will be added. Because that is what happens. A part of me wishes for one more week. I like being a bum. One thing I learned in Mexico, was the importance of being present. That wh...

I have been thinking about guilt lately. I have been doing some reading about it tonight on explorefaith.org. This is a website with some very interesting things on it about faith. The quote I want to use in this post comes from an article about letting go: — Less guilt . You will become more sensitive to the difference between meaningful guilt (a failure to be true to your best self that invites change) and senseless guilt (a feeling of inadequacy based on the opinions and expectations of others.) The words   ought , should ,   must , and   supposed to   will virtually disappear from your vocabulary—replaced by   I will, I choose, and I want. This small paragraph confirms for me what I was beginning to think about guilt. Guilt is not inherently bad/negative, it is a human emotion like any other. The line, "meaningful guilt (a failure to be true to your best self) and senseless guilt (a feeling of inadequacy based on the opinions and expectations of other...