New Year's Revelations

I broke down when we got home from my sister’s house on Christmas. I was feeling the pressure of all the things I’ve been putting off until “after the holidays”. Plus holiday and personality stress like my sister snapping at me earlier that morning and two pairs of Kirk’s brand new Christmas present underpants being accidentally thrown away. I need to feel like we’re making preparations for this baby. I definitely do not feel like Mr. b and I are on the same page as far as baby prep goes and even after talking to him about it I still don’t know that we are. But I did realize that I need to take control over something, anything.

I’ve joked about my procrastination habits for most of my life. I put off everything from school work to sewing projects and it’s continued into my adulthood, to an occasionally detrimental degree. I didn’t bother to submit the rebate paperwork for the dishwasher delivery fee in a timely fashion and we’ll likely miss out on that now. I still haven’t made an appointment for Kirk’s eyes or for my thumb, because neither are immediately critical issues so it’s easy to put off. I can’t allow myself to be so lacking when it comes to housework and homemaking and parenting and being a grown up.

My grandmother gave me a piece of advice that I’ve tried to follow: just do one thing every day so that your chores don’t pile up. The problem is that I’ve become accustomed to certain tasks and count them in lieu of others. Don’t feel like sweeping the floors? Well, how ‘bout I do a load of laundry that could wait until tomorrow instead. I rarely run out of clean clothes for the family to wear but the old stove top was usually a disaster. I recently read the sixth book in the Anne of Green Gable series. In it she’s a grown woman, married to Gilbert and raising their six (surviving) children. And she is constantly working, whether it’s in the garden or sewing something for one of the kids or something else, she is busy. When her friends come to visit they bring their knitting or lace making projects and they sit together and chat while working. Idle time for daydreaming is a luxury to be doled out sparingly. And I realized, I take my idle time for granted and it’s actually doing me a disservice.

I need to keep busy. I have excellent time management skills. At work I can juggle multiple deadlines and beat them easily. When cooking I can nearly always perfectly time out each element of a multi-part meal without actually thinking about it. I’ve known for years now that if I bustle about the house when I first get home from work, picking up or making dinner or something simple, that I’ll get a lot done but if I allow myself to sit on the couch first then the evening is a complete bust. So I obviously need to extend this to the post-dinner hour. Spending time on the internets is great. Watching TV is great. Reading is great. But I need to dial it back and make sure I keep it balanced. For me it’s not idle hands that are the devil’s playground but rather an idle mind. If I’m not focused on something then I start to over-think and over-analyze. Worry. Fret. And just generally freak out about life, the universe, and everything.

This afternoon I read this article about praise and boy did it lock in to place all the pieces of my previous revelation and self-awareness. I absolutely didn't bother to try at things that didn't come naturally. Putting in effort was for suckers and nerds; the "real" smart kids didn't have to work at it and I was always able to easily classify myself with that elitist bent. Besides, it’s not like there was an *actual* A+++ I could earn. (Extra credit? Of course! As long as it was easy.) College was a real wake-up call for me. No longer was Good Enough good enough when I was competing with students that actually tried. My Good Enough was no longer Spectacular in comparison. I do wonder how much of that old attitude is residual in what I now label as my natural procrastination? If I don't start a craft project until it's "due" then the only effort I'm putting in is the bare minimum needed to finish, right? Nothing extra.

I can also see that I already do praise the Captain very specifically. I will tell him that he’s awesome for a defined reason. He pooped in the potty all by himself. Why? Because he’s awesome. I praise him for trying something he’s previously declined to even attempt and give him detailed feedback when he’s particularly polite or does something completely on his own for the first time without prompting from me. I definitely think that must be a subconscious reaction to try to prevent the same thing from happening to him – being overwhelmed by too much adequacy.

I absolutely believe that being Good at too many things but Great at nothing is what has led me to my current I-just-fell-into-this career. I know my mom believes that the same thing happened to her and led to her becoming a teacher, because then she didn’t have to focus. I could never pick a minute enough topic for a dissertation and that was definitely as big of a factor as finances and general dissatisfaction with contract archaeology which allowed me to finally let go of the idea of grad school. And I think it has a lot to do with my inability to pick a career path now. I keep telling myself that I just can’t think about it until after maternity leave. But why? Why can’t I start researching and investigating my options? I’ve had countless job performance reviews where I’ve heard, “You’re just so much smarter than everyone else that it’s intimidating” but no real mentoring advice. So I’m on my own I guess. I need to take this newfound self-awareness and apply it to something more than just doing the dishes and cleaning the bathroom and sorting through Kirk’s old baby clothes to find the gender neutral stuff. Intelligence absolutely can be learned. Your brain absolutely can be exercised. I need to believe that I can stop this cycle of just taking the HR mandated promotions as they come and actually earn something. But godsdamn it’s going to be hard. And trying is just so foreign to me.