My weekend was full of obligations. Some pleasant obligations, like dinner plans with a friend who was in town, and an engagement party. Some less pleasant, like bulk pick up. Pleasant or unpleasant, they are still obligations. For those of you who are uninformed, bulk pick up is when you drive around on saturday morning and pick up stuff for the junior league attic sale. No one put a gun to my head and made me join the junior league so I'm not going to complain about such obligations, but suffice it to say that when my alarm went off on saturday morning I was less than thrilled. But! It was a beautiful morning and I went to Starbucks as a treat for myself and there were krispy kremes at the jla office, and overall it ended up being an enjoyable experience.
Then today I volunteered at Arts in the Heart, which was also rather enjoyable. So, although I had all these obligations, I ended up having a great weekend. But for each obligation, I had an extremely strong urge to skip them, to cancel dinner, to call in sick to bulk pick up, to just not show to the engagement party. Really, who would really care or notice? Then I realized that the answer to that question is that I would care and notice. I would be the one racked with guilt and bothered by my own irresponsibility. No one would be more bothered by my flaky behavior than me. And the only way to prevent that, was to not be flaky and to not cancel and to not be the kind of person who although they say they will be there you really believe it until you see them.
There are little things that make a difference in my every life. If I get enough sleep, if I take my vitamins, if I exercise, if I take my adderall like I'm suppose to (this helps me with ALL the other things on this list), if I drink enough water, if I eat breakfast, if I don't drink too much alcohol, if I hang my clothes up when I take them off, if I write down what I'm suppose to do tomorrow before I leave work today, if I return phone calls, if I go to church, if I wash my hair, if I floss, if I keep Briscoe's hair cut, if I keep my car clean, if I get my coffee ready for the morning before I go to sleep tonight, if I wake up at the same time every day, if I take half an hour a week to do something for someone other than myself. if I do these things, my life is better.
Now, let's be clear. I don't do these things. I try. Just identifying what these things are is half of my battle. That has taken years. Actually training myself to do these things is going to take a lot longer. And I'll probably never get all these things down, and this list is not complete, and as I get older I'm sure it will just get longer. But each time I do one of these things, each time I actually accomplish an obligation, my life is enriched.
The difficult things is that I don't want to do most of these things. When I change clothes when I get home from work, I want to throw them on the ground. I don't like washing my hair. I forget to take my vitamins. I can barely check my voicemail, much less call people back. I do like to exercise, but I still have to make it a priority or it won't happen.
In other news, How Bout them DAWGS! We looked good yesterday. I'm excited about this weekend. I had totally decided to not go, but now I have to go. It's going to be a blackout. I'm being flaky by changing my mind, but there isn't anything I can do about that, because I really need to be in sanford stadium on saturday night.
the thin line between optimism and delusion... 