Dropping the Ball.

It's that time of year again, where everyone sits down with their pad of paper and writes out the same ole' New Year's Resolutions that they write down every year.

"This year, I will lose the weight."

"This year, I will organize the garage."

"This year, I will spend more time with my family."

Every year I do this, and every year I inevitably fail. I set up these lofty, broad resolutions that really have no chance of being taken seriously because they aren't realistic.

Okay, so I want to lose some weight. I have (hopefully) a wedding to plan this year and I refuse to look at wedding dresses with a double chin and these 30 extra pounds around my middle that have magically appeared since I've been in a relationship. What are some actual REAL steps I can take to get there?

I've decided that instead of making broad resolutions that have tons of room for failure, I am going to make realistic monthly goals that I have a better chance at succeeding at. I have a history of dropping the ball each and every year when it comes to those darned resolutions and this year, I refuse to allow my goals to go unfulfilled - which is why I am setting them up for success.

My first and foremost way to set up success for myself is to get rid of distractions....of which I have many. I need to make myself a priority and then stick by that. Maybe if I invest more into myself, then others around me will be inspired to do the same. I do so much for so many people that at the end of the day, not much is left for myself. I feel guilty if I steal a few minutes away at the end of the day for an extra long bath. I never complain when after working hard and diligently and then stealing off to have a quiet lunch alone at work, my boss barges in to chat 15 minutes of my alone time away. I give in to my children's each and every demand upon my attentions.

This needs to be amended. 

I think I will be pleasantly amazed at how better I will function and how easier keeping to my schedule will be once I get rid of the distractions and the needless noise. That needless noise includes in part, my anxieties. They take up so much of my day. I worry about this, I worry about that, I worry about worrying about this and that. If I had nothing to worry about, I'd borrow something. It's not only time consuming, but it's exhausting and all that anxiety keeps me from getting other things done properly and with good form. I need to remember that to have success, I must create it.

I spoke in an earlier post about creating my sacred spot for writing. It's a spot that will be dedicated only to the writing process and nothing else. It will be mine, and mine alone. My desire to write is right up at the top of my resolution/goal list for the new year. I will create opportunities for me to sit down and allow myself the peace, quiet and time to write. The goal for this is simple - spend the first week that I am back home creating this spot. In the meantime, find other places to sit down and pour some thoughts out. The writing process cannot stop just because things are not yet perfect. The sacred spot shall be created, but it may take the entire month to do it (monetary means after Christmas need some sorting). I will still sit down every single day and write - whether it be an hour or half an hour. I must begin conditioning myself, my body, my mind and my emotional state to writing again.

Writing is not easy. Pouring my feelings and thoughts into a public forum are not easy. I am afraid, I am nervous and I am not sure how I will receive myself. I can only promise myself that above all, I will try very hard to be kind. I will not re-read and analyze my blog postings...I will let things flow and then hit "publish" and be done with it.

Okay - so one of my goals for the new year is to figure out a situation with my job that will work for everyone. I currently work 8 hours a day with a 2 hour a day commute. That is 10 hours a day - 50 hours a week that I am away from my home. I make a decent amount of money for what I do, and I manage my money moderately well and my family lives a happy and contented life with all of the things that we need and a lot of the things that we want. We could go without a lot of things and still be happy.

I enjoy my job, but also have a lot of issues with it.

A) It's not what I want to be doing for the rest of my life. Being an administrator certainly appeals to parts of me - I enjoy the organization and task oriented work. I also have no competition because I am the only admin in the office. But it's definitely not my passion, and not something that I am okay with having take me away from the rest of my entire life for ten hours a day. Who says I HAVE to work and do all of these things that are not my passion? My passions are my kids, writing, reading...my passion is myself. None of these things are fulfilled at this job. My input is ignored, my words have no weight. My position is not valuable enough (in the eyes of everyone else but me) to garner respect. That is NOT part of any of my passions.

B) Little to no appreciation. I am constantly looked at to fix things. I am constantly looked at for the answers. I feel as if I'm taken advantage of and not appreciated - those are hard things to feel on a regular basis. I feel as if I work extremely hard and have since the beginning of my term at this current job. I walked into a start-up...had no idea that was what I was doing, and I hit the ground running and earned the respect of the contractors that were working for us. But strangely enough, I never earned the respect from the higher-ups in my company. I did A LOT of REALLY hard work and never received a thank you, a good job, nothing. And trust me, after the amount of work I did - I deserved it. Of that fact, I have no allusions. I constantly feel like I am a supporting character who is used to make the main characters shine.

C) There is little room for expansion - and I've seen that firsthand. I applied for a different position within my company and was rejected. I don't think I was really even considered, and had the fact thrown in my face more than once. It stung. Really stung. I could have really excelled at that position. I accepted the fact that it was not my time for progression, and settled back into my current position - but again, there is no room for advancement and I fear that the longer I stay in this position, the more everyone around me depends on me and the harder it will be for me to make any sort of moves in or outside of the company.

D) And most important - it pulls me away from every other important thing to me. I've missed my children's school performances, school parties, ballgames, homework time...all sorts of things for this job. And I get that most people would not give me much sympathy because hey, everyone gives those things ups. But...why do we? Why is work so much more important than family? I think it's only because we make it that way. As I said before, there are so many things that my family could go without and still be happy. And I wonder if we did that, and those "things" were replaced with my being there and my time with my family, how much happier in the end we would all be. My kids miss me. I miss them. And to set myself up for success in all the things I personally want for ME - I may need to rethink this working full time thing.

I'm contemplating ways on how to get there. I could ask if I could go down to part time and see how that works. Maybe gradually cut working out and once summer comes and the kids are out of school, stop working completely and be at home with them. Enjoying their shining, happy faces and having adventures every day again. The thought of that just makes me happy, and I can only imagine how I'd feel if that were really reality. Not to mention all the time I'd be opening up to work on my writing, and work on myself. The important things.

A job that's going nowhere is really not all that important. 

So, I'll be chatting about my goals for the New Year pretty often. They are going to be part of what defines my year and defines my time. I'm working on a list with things kind of mapped out; I've always worked better when working off a list.

Once that ball drops on New Years Eve, I'll be catching it and keeping it off the ground the entire year.