Sunday, January 06, 2008

Go... Set... Ready...

So tomorrow it all starts again.

TeenTuna will be back in school. Time to drive back and forth every day. University classes start tomorrow, meaning 40,000 students have just moved back into town for the next 5 months. Time to move over and smoooosh a little bit more to make room. My teaching up north also starts this week, so that pesky commute is back again, not to mention classes to plan and songs to be sung. And then there is the usual dance classes and choir practices and everything else that has already started to creep onto the family schedule that combine into a big ball of frenzy.

I'm good with being not-bored. I'm good with being active. I'm even good with the whole being too-busy-for-my-own-good. But I'm not good with the frenzy, and frankly I don't even like it.

I'm going to take a different approach. Usually life is a ready-Set-GO! kind of affair. It seems an awful lot like the beginning of a race. Waiting for the starter's pistol is scary and stressful. And once that CRACK splits the air -- for a moment, anyway -- it isn't relaxing or freeing. There is a flurry of sound and movement and before you start you feel like you're already behind and then comes the brain's panicky somewhat spastic AUUGGGGH -- GO GO GO!! which doesn't seem to go away until you get yourself into a rhythm. Or at least that's how I would imagine it all to be, if I were a racer of some kind or another.

I think what I need to do in order to go forward in any sort of positive, healthy way, is go backwards. Instead of ready-Set-GO! I think I need to GO-Set-ready.

GO!
Sunday night is often the evening of doom as I stare down the upcoming week. That needs to change. I need to be more active and GO! before the frenzy hits in order to avoid the fretting and worrying and depression about what's around the corner of the next calendar page. Then maybe I'll be

Set
I'll never be an overly orderly neat and tidy a place for everything and everything in its place kind of person without some sort of brain transplant or personal secretary or maid. But I do need to feel Set. I need to feel as if I have some sort of control or at least can achieve some sort of peaceful cohabitation with my life and my environment and my schedule, even if all those things so often are dictated by the whims and demands of others. So what I need to do is make myself

ready
ready to face the next page on the calendar
ready to be more accepting of those commitments I have made
ready to say "no" to others when I really can't
ready to find a way to say "yes" to myself when I really should
ready to be a self-sustaining light for myself and others
ready to live and not just survive

What does this mean to make myself ready? I don't know for sure. But for tonight, it meant turning off the television (The Genius would be pleased), making sure I wrote on my blog, and shortly it means taking some time for myself with a bit of music and maybe some reading?

I'm tired of the Sunday night blues, not to mention the take-no-prisoners survival mode I generally adopt to make it through the weekly rat race. Maybe I can't change the flight path, but I can change the approach and the takeoff. I'm hoping to calm my own turbulence and then maybe it doesn't have to be a bumpy ride.

You are now free to move around the cabin.

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