Working on It

So on paper, I’m not exactly anything special…I work full-time, not too far from home, my husband works full-time, (sort of) and I have a kid and a dog. We own our own house in a great, if not in an expensive-to-live-in neighborhood; we have a car payment and bills just like everyone else. I don’t have money troubles because one or both of us has been laid off, my kid is perfect and healthy, the dog is the easiest in the world to take care of, and my husband and I have a great marriage. We communicate well, and I think that helps to make everything so. much. easier.

Like many other working moms, I have a laundry list of things that I want to accomplish. It includes things like laundry and making dinner, to cleaning out closets and packing away clothes that won’t ever fit me again, to updating my blog and making it pretty and more user-friendly. One would think with the amount of time I spend in front of a computer at work I’d be able to figure out the blog thing, but it’s just past me right now. In fact, most of my duties are past me right now. Which is weird to me, because, on paper, I am nothing special. There is absolutely no reason I should be feeling down, or sad, or frustrated and angry…I am just like everyone else out there.

All day, as I sit at work, I stew over what I could be doing at home. I talk with the other moms of little kids, and they talk about what their kids are learning and what they are teaching them and how. And I think, “If I had more time.” (and I only have 1 kid…my sisters each have 4!) It’s the little things and the small bits of time that you spend with your child, I know…while teaching puppy kindergarten we would explain to people that 10 minutes of training a day is all it takes. And it is all they can handle. Kids are a lot like puppies that way. But I struggle to spend that little bit of time.

Workaholic thinks that I have S.A.D., or Seasonal Affective Disorder. It’s when the winter blues really get you down. I try to explain to him that I am depressed in the summer too…so I don’t think it is just S.A.D. I don’t make a secret of my belief in medication or talk therapy to help get people through the hard times. Let’s just say that Workaholic wishes I wasn’t so vocal about it. He thinks my business is our business…not everyone else’s. Which I guess makes sense…but if one person opens their mind a little bit more to meds and therapy and it helps, and it is because of me…well, that would make me feel good. (He also thinks it's worse in my head than in real like...which is funny, because isn't it all in my head??)

So let’s just say that I’ve been having a bit of a hard time lately. Getting even the simplest of tasks done wipes me out, and tackling the bigger ones is just beyond what I am able to handle at this moment. UNLESS I am given a deadline. It’s like when you are in college and your boyfriend breaks up with you and you just want to lay down in bed and cry…but you have a psyche paper due. And if you don’t turn in said psyche paper, you will get kicked out of your major, or out of school. I need a deadline like that. I was really hoping that we’d sell our house and that would be the needed kick in the pants, but so far, that hasn’t happened. But that doesn’t stop me from wishing and dreaming.

I wish I was that person who rolled out of bed and jumped up and said “HELLO DAY!” But I’m not. I wish I was that person who smiled at everyone in the hallway, even when crying inside. But I’m not. I tend to wear my emotions on my sleeve, unless it is for a short enough amount of time I can act my way through it. So, those of you in my real life, if I haven’t talked to you in a while, I’m just tired. So, so tired. And I’m just trying to figure out how to get out of this funk. The guilt that I haven’t talked to anyone, really, outside of work kills me sometimes. So I need to get over that, because that just makes things worse. But I’m working on it…I’m working on getting better. And for Workaholic’s sake, I’ll just leave it at that