I try to not post non-WoW related things in this blog. But this one, I want to share.
My epiphany came about because my birthday was this last November 5th.
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I'm never going to get younger.
Every year, I'm going to get slower, heavier, weaker and less flexible unless I do something about it NOW.
My metabolism is never going to be what it was when I was 16. I can't count on some nebulous internal fat-burning machine to do it for me anymore. If I don't get off my ass, soon it'll be too big for me to get out of the chair.
I will never be my mother. Which is something of a shame because my mother is AWESOME. She somehow manages to clean the house, walk the dog, feed my father, work, do the laundry, clean the SPARE ROOM THAT NO ONE EVER GOES INTO but needs to be cleaned anyway because it's there, make extra food to freeze for when she won't be home to feed my father, make the bed, walk the dog again, clean the kitchen, vacuum the house and have a glass of wine after dinner... all in one day. And she still has time to do sudoku and sit outside and smoke (bad mom, BAD!) and watch soap operas.
She's SuperMom.
I can however, strive to be a bit less like a pre-teen in my habits and my house-hold-cleanliness. I won't ever be UberMom. I should stop feeling like a failure when I can't do what my mother does. My life is different.
I should however, not use the 'I can't do it! Wah' as an excuse to stop trying. It didn't work when I was a pre-teen, it should not hold true now that I don't have my mother pushing me to finish what I start or do something time consuming but important, like filling the dishwasher rather than putting the dishes in the sink.
FlyLady worked for me once, then I got overwhelmed with life, cancer, school, and etc, etc, excuse, excuse. I can go back to it and make it work again.
And if I don't do it NOW. I won't do it. So I start NOW.
People shouldn't make New Years resolutions. Because it's just a day. It's just another year. So many of those pass on.
We should make Birthday Resolutions. Because I am 29 years old now.
So what if it's 2008, 2009.. whatever. But I'm almost 30. Holy shit. I'm almost 30.
My mental projection of myself is that I'm still in my early twenties. If I make a character in a tabletop game, she's invariably 21, 22 or 23. So, I see myself. But I'm almost 30.
I theorhetically should have spent the last 30 years building up good habits about life and how I live my life that I don't have to think about it anymore, I just do it. Unfortunately, I didn't. So I have to start now.
FlyLady is a great resource, not just for how to keep your house clean and get it clean without burning out on cleaning or looking at the radioactive danger zone your house is and saying, "There's no way I can clean all of this!". You do it in small steps. You start small. You grow step by baby step. You don't try to do TOO much in one day, because you'll become discouraged.
I won't get my house clean in one day. I won't get into a work out routine that I can stick to in one day. I won't lose 10 pounds in one day.
I can clean my kitchen sink today. I can do the Sun Salutation today. I can drink plenty of water today and stay away from the CupCakes that some well-meaning but horrible person brought into work today.
Today I woke up, 30 minutes later than I wanted to, and had to force myself out of bed. Not because I was TIRED, but because I didn't want to get up. Because I had told myself this morning I was going to START.
As a result, I got up, showered, got dressed and then still made myself do the things I told myself I was going to do.
I wiped down the bathroom surfaces and floor. Wet pet fur, yuck.
I emptied the dishwasher. I put new dishes in the dishwasher.
I put things that needed to soak off caked on crap full of hot water and set them on the newly cleaned off kitchen table, so that when I get home from work, I can rinse them out and either put them in the dishwasher, or wash them and put them away.
I partially cleaned out the sink that all that stuff was sitting in, but had to leave for work. (The reason I didn't want to wake up at 7:45, but rather wanted to wake up at 7. Now I have to do that when I get home, yet.)
This afternoon, before I log into WoW or do my NaNoWriMo for the day, I'm going to do at LEAST 5 minutes of stretching and yoga.
I am 29 years old. It's time to start living.
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<3 K so much! Three cheers!!!
ReplyDeleteIf there is one thing that I would observe, it is that it is unfair to compare yourself to your UberMom. Your mom had no choice. She had kids, and kids are unforgiving in their demands.
I am the laziest, sleepiest, anemic-ist (is that even a word) person I know, but I get a lot of shit done, every day without exception.
The difference between lazy nesh from 2 years ago and lazy nesh today is that I simply have no choice today. Children don't turn over and go back to sleep. They don't skip meals. They don't oblige you by reading a book quietly instead of pulling chunks of charred wood out of the fireplace and dragging them around the house.
I wake up early and I get my morning chores done, the peach and I drive an hour out to daycare and work, then I work pretty much all day, commute home, do more chores, baby down, more chores after that, and then it's an hour or two of "something fun" before collapsing.
And there is no break. Ever, on account of anything. Scott pulls his weight on daddy and husband duties, but it's a three-person job shouldered by two people.
All I'm saying is -- don't beat yourself up! Enjoy the lazy while you can, because if you ever decide to have kids, you won't get it back. Have a donut for dinner without any guilt -- there's no child looking up at you making you feel like the worst role model in the world. If you want a clean house, clean it by all means, but you might be better off substituting an empty house. Stuff everything into a box and put it in the basement. You don't *need* any of it, and if you do, it's in the basement.
I envy my old pre-parenthood life a lot, so I encourage you to make the most of it.
Thanks for writing this up.
ReplyDeleteLike you said, just start small and work your way up. No marathoner starts off by running 26 miles.
And happy belated birthday! :)
I'm 37 and still see myself as in my 20s. I'm glad you mentioned FlyLady. Many years ago I came across that site, I might have even joined... not sure what happened. I sure could use it now!
ReplyDelete@Neshura - I will enjoy myself while I can, but I want to change some of the things I feel are backwards in my life. But yeah, having 3 kids (two of us and my father) probably encouraged my mom to just keep doing doing doing. That and my maternal grandmother is old school Italian... so girls did the cleaning.
ReplyDelete@GoW: Thank you for the belated wishes! I'm glad you enjoyed the post, for what it's worth.
@Mama: It's never too late to join FlyLady. I think the problem a lot of people have with the idea.. is the idea of starting slowly. We want to jump in and have a sparkling house RIGHT NOW thank you VERY much! And that isn't the way her program is designed to work. It's going to take time to get the house the way I want it to be. But I will say this... if you do it, one step at a time, it IS possible and easy to maintain! Like I said, I was doing it really well for maybe 7 months, had more energy than I knew what to do with and a cleaner house than I ever had... and I felt I was barely doing anything at all once I had the routines in place.
Happy Super Blated B-Day!!! I realized that I was getting older when I hit 25 this August. No time like the present to do something about it, even a little something. I have started working out a bit and being more active around the house. It helps me feel better. Now, if I could get my head around NOT clearing my plate at every meal, I would be in good shape. Metabolism is dropping.......
ReplyDelete