[et_pb_section bb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” specialty=”off”][et_pb_fullwidth_post_title title=”on” meta=”on” author=”on” date=”on” categories=”on” comments=”on” featured_image=”on” featured_placement=”background” parallax_effect=”on” parallax_method=”off” text_orientation=”left” text_color=”dark” text_background=”on” text_bg_color=”rgba(255,255,255,0.9)” use_border_color=”off” border_color=”#ffffff” border_style=”solid” parallax=”on” /][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section bb_built=”1″ admin_label=”section”][et_pb_row admin_label=”row” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” background_size=”initial”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_divider color=”#ffffff” show_divider=”off” height=”15″ divider_style=”solid” divider_position=”top” hide_on_mobile=”on” disabled_on=”on|on|off” /][et_pb_text background_layout=”light” border_style=”solid” _builder_version=”3.0.78″]

Saturday was housework,
tile vacuumed and 
all the things left out
that needed a final place
finally sorted out. 
Well, some of them –
and that’s a good start.
The kids and Steve,
they worked outside Saturday,
and Bri helped inside too.
And then Sunday,
I dragged buckets of dirt
dirt we’ll say that I’d been growing
and dumped it into
the raised beds
I’d half built
with bamboo we’d cut down
months ago.
And I finally emptied out
that 18 gallon
once-was-red
cracked-and-faded
with-rope-handles
utility-tub-turned-planting pot
that we’d been carting around
since The House We Were Not Allowed to Garden In,
and with Austin helping me
finally planted my spider lilies
along the front porch,
though in fairness,
the location choice was his.
He said it was blank wall,
and needed something.
And we also pulled up
some baby elephant ears
from the swampy back half
and planted them around one of the big oaks up front, too.
And then, tonight,
Bri and I
sat in the office
her with her tablet
reading a book for homework on Kindle,
and me with a fine tooth comb,
for the second treatment
of that which shall not be named –
bless her father and stepmom for doing the first treatment.

This all sounds
like some rote and standard
list of what
plenty of people do
every weekend,
only you see,
for me,
it’s not.
Usually, me,
I’m still working.
I work seven days a week,
and feel guilty when I’m not.
I can’t not be,
and this sense
that I should be doing something else,
it follows me
closer than my own shadow,
a litany in my mind
of everything I am afraid to
or can’t
forget that needs doing,
an ever growing and
shifting when I forget
or don’t have the time
list of things
that is so overwhelming to write down,
and writing it down
does little more than
remind me
of how far behind I am,
and how each not done thing
reminds me of
how I am failing
in every other area too,
and if I was better at work
and everything else,
none of this would be a problem.

Except, this week,
I didn’t work all weekend,
leaving me feeling
like a failure on every other front,
hopeless that I could
ever feel at peace
in my own home an skin.
This week,
I set up boundaries –
and also scaffolding,
in the form of
systems to take care of
things I’d been
keeping track of in my head.
This week
I gave up
trying to use someone else’s systems
or planners
or time blocks
or methods,
and just started
piecing together my own.
They would drive
almost anyone else
to distraction,
but they are a relief to me.
They are borne out of
30+ years of understanding
of how I work and how I don’t,
and when I work at my best,
and fueled by a deep, aching want
for there to be more to my life
than work.
But also an intense hatred
of anything resembling a schedule.

Do you know how hard it is
to structure anything
when the standard approach
is to start with
goal setting
and then hourly scheduling
and even rough time limits
on a task
is enough to make you
avoid it out of intense anxiety
that you might not finish
or get it done
or get interrupted
or it’ll take longer
or or or or?
You have nothing to go off of
when you don’t work well
with hours or blocks of time,
and no template to jump from.

Y’all, my brain,
it doesn’t have a standard gear.
I have a spectrum of gears,
and it’s taken me a very, very
very
long time to realize
and make peace with
understanding
that I will never, ever
be standard.
It is painful to try to be.
Very painful.
So, I’ve been building from scratch
my scaffolding
to support me
in being who I want to be.
Not be more productive,
not get more done,
not be more or something else.
Just to be who I want to be,
who I know I am,
but have lacked the coping skills
and tools
and methods
to express to my own satisfaction.
I’ve lived most of my life
disappointed in who I was being,
because it wasn’t who I knew I was.
I just didn’t have the tools to be it.

Something shifted this week,
or maybe a whole lot of somethings,
and understanding was the end result.
Understanding that
I am not a failure
or a freak
for having that discrepancy between
who I was being and who I knew I was,
or that none of the standard tools worked for me.
There’s a reason they don’t work for me.

So I’ve been making my own tools,
and the end result was that
this weekend
I knew that I both
had the time
and needed to take the time
for my own happiness
to not work,
to vacuum the floors
and take are of
yard work long over due.

It was damn hard.
I’d keep circling my desk,
and maybe I did a tiny bit.
But nothing I hadn’t already planned on doing
so that come my work days,
everything else was lined up.

Even better,
the million things
I usually keep track of in my head,
they have a place
and are waiting for me,
and I don’t have
the constant energy drain
of it all sitting in my head.
And if more show up,
and they will, they always do,
I know where to stick them.
Now, the new ideas,
now that I have the head space for them,
I’m still working out that one.
I have some possibilities,
but they’ll take some time.

But I’m finding
I seem to have a little more of that now too.

Even more wonderful as being able to do
house and yard work
without feeling
like I needed to be
doing something else.

Gah, I have so much more I could say,
but my attention span is shot for tonight.
And I’m hungry.
Maybe I’ll
find a way to come back and explain more,
but maybe it’ll just stay
in barely-legible handwriting
in a journal by my bed,
and as memories of
conversations in the car with Steve.

I’m sure plenty of you understand,
without my saying more anyway.

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