What Happens When Life Interferes

It’s been a long month.  I feel as though I haven’t had the time or energy to sit at the computer at all.  My email checking has turned into scanning for anything important and deleting the rest.  I feel bad that I haven’t read the messages from my groups, but it can’t be helped.  Here are just a few consequences of allowing life (aka, the job) to interfere with my routine:

1. I’ve gained five pounds.  I haven’t been getting to the gym because when I’m not working, I’m either taking care of the family or falling into my bed.  I still fit in my “skinny” jeans, but they most definitely are not comfortable right now.  The good news is I went this morning.  Hopefully I will remember how I feel right now and keep it up.

2.  I lost my writing assignment.  I know my next assignment is due June 11th, but I’ll be damned if I know where the previous assignment is, marked up and waiting for my revisions.  I really need to find that!

3.  I had to hit the “more posts” on most of my favorite blogs.  This is another pastime that I’ve ignored.  I have many blogs I’m addicted to and I feel like I’ve been missing out.  Luckily, I had some kid-free time this morning and I caught up on a few.

These are just a few things that I’ve allowed to fall apart since accepting the manager’s position at my work.  I feel much like I did after K was born, when I felt like I was letting Heather slip away and K’s mom and Rick’s wife were becoming my entire identity.  I feel fortunate that I have been there before and realize the warning signs.  It is much easier to reclaim my life after a month than it is after six months or a year!

Letting Go

It’s time for my contribution to the May blog chain. This month is unthemed which always makes it interesting. Auria got the chain started by discussing someone she knew who was lying. From there, the next link was FreshHell discussing a former friend and the different truths that are provided by knowing someone in certain circumstances. The link directly before mine is Polyspace, where Kathleen discusses dealing with hateful feelings.

When I first started my blog, I chose “For the First Time” as my title because of where I was in life at the time. I was desperately trying to find myself. I felt lost in being a mother, daughter, sister, friend, and wanted to find myself. “For the First Time” was also the name of my first (and currently collecting dust) work in progress.

Writing became therapy to me. I’m not sure that story is something I could ever share with the world. I started living my life through the main character. Her pain was my own very real pain. As I wrote, I started to see very traumatic times in my life. For the first time, I was dealing with them in my own way. My parents’ divorce and the effect it had on me as an adult child. A bad breakup with my first love, who I didn’t get over for a very long time. My feelings of inadequacy as a mother. My desire to be so much more than I have achieved to this point in my life.

There was bitterness on every page of that story. The funny thing is, since I realized that and stopped writing it, life has gotten better. It’s as though I needed to get it out of my system and let it go. By placing those memories into a fictional story I had done that. Sitting down at my computer brought a peace and calm to my life that I never truly had before I started writing.

Journaling is something I was never very good at. When I would read my words, it felt as though I was throwing a pity party for myself. I’m not sure if it’s healthy to deal with life’s issues this way, but it seems to be working. I’ve long said that everything that goes wrong in life is a step closer to things going right, but now, I feel like I’m better at living by those words.

Next up in the chain is Family on Bikes.

Coming Back From an Injury

I’ve posted about how great I felt when I was active. About a week and a half ago, I started to have pain in my lower back. This wasn’t caused by over exercising, it is the combination of being a mom and cleaning the house. I hadn’t been to the gym for a few days before and haven’t been since. Once the back resolved, I came down with a nasty cold and had trouble breathing at rest, so getting my heartrate up was out of the question.

Today, I’m feeling human but worn out. Just as I noticed an increase in my energy level after I started exercising, I’ve noticed a decline since I’ve been more sedentary. I look forward to getting back to the gym tonight after the hubby gets home.

I had been hoping to participate in my first 5K by the end of the summer. By going to the gym late at night when no one else was around, I found the courage to try jogging instead of walking. This is no small feat for someone who is overweight, but I did it. It felt great! I’m not going to be doing any running for a while, but I am definitely going to work on building up to it again. I can almost feel the satisfaction I know I will feel when I do it, and I’m going to use that to motivate me.

It’s easy to view a setback as a failure. It’s only a true failure if you fail to get back to doing the work required to achieve your goal.

Time to Begin the May Blog Chain!

I must be crazy, but I volunteered to organize the blog chain for the second month in a row. With a short sign-up period, we still managed a great turnout! This month, the chain will be unthemed, which means you can go wherever your little heart desires as long as you somehow tie in to the person before you. For those reading but not writing, be sure to check out the links as unthemed chains can be very entertaining!

Here is the list of May’s participants:

Auria Cortes

Life in Scribbletown

Polyamory From the Inside Out

For the First Time

Family On Bikes

Writes in the City

Elf Killing and Other Hobbies

Rotating Bear

Fantastical Imagination

Asian Business

Spittin’ (Out Words) Like a Llama

As Yet Untitled

Mad Scientist Matt’s Lair

Peregrinas

Delirious

And So Ends the First Job

Well, it was fun for the couple of weeks it lasted. The site I was blogging about Evansville for is being shut down. It was still in the experimental stage, and apparently not as successful as they would have liked. I am currently working on developing a new blog that will continue the posting I was doing there.

The new URL is http://evansvillewi.wordpress.com

Contrasting Parents

Being an adult child of divorce brings a completely different set of issues from growing up with divorced parents. I was 19 when my parents divorced, living on my own. Since then, both of my parents have remarried. This also brings different complexities than would be present if I had been a child when “step-parents” or “other parents” were brought into the mix.

I’ve been trying to figure out how to write this post and have it come out the way I want it to. For some reason, the words aren’t coming as easily as I would like. There is a moral to the story, I swear!

As I drove home last night, I found myself thinking about the environments I enter when I visit my dad and his wife or my mom and her husband. I know why it was on my mind, and that’s because I had just left my mom’s.

First, let me say that I do love my mom. The thing is, they have a way of living in the past at her house. My mom will constantly bring up the she’s upset that my dad _________ because when we were kids he didn’t __________ or something to that effect. Truth be told, I know that my dad has grown and changed in the past decade, I don’t need her to tell me that. But I find it unsettling that she still feels a need to create a void in our childhood memories.

I know that my dad wasn’t there for everything when I was younger. If he was home, he was there, if he was working, he wasn’t. That sacrifice allowed mom to stay home with us. I don’t remember feeling less loved because he occasionally missed things.

As for her husband, he seems to want to tarnish dad’s image by basing comments on what he thinks he knows of the past. It’s not as bad as it once was, but every once in a while, he makes a comment that goes over like a fart in church.

When I visit my dad, mom is seldom brought up. When she is, it’s something going on in the present. I haven’t once heard from him how my mom did ___________ when we were younger and that made us suffer in _________ way. He’s secure in his relationship with us and at times he pushes to make sure that we all have a relationship with mom.

His wife brings up my mother even more infrequently than my dad does. She didn’t know our family before she started dating my dad and seems to keep that in mind. She only knows my mom by what she’s been told or what she’s seen the relatively few times they’ve been around each other. She doesn’t assume that she knows my mom. She doesn’t try to improve her standing in our lives by cutting our mom down. By acting this way, she has become a mother figure to us.

I know this may all be confusing. Some of the details have been left out intentionally. The point I’m trying to make is that I don’t HAVE to see my parents’ spouses as parental figures in my life. Their actions have determined how I see them. It has also affected how I view my relationship with my parents. I hope to never be faced with step-parents in my daughter’s life, but if I do, I hope that I would take the high road that has been taken by my dad.

No matter what age the children are, I think it’s important for parents to be very careful how they talk about the other parent. Kids aren’t stupid, don’t paint someone as a villain if they aren’t.