More Journal/Less Blog

Ok, so this entry would be better off between the scrawled inky pages of my tattered journal, but I am putting it here in case it helps someone else. It is about how shooting for less can make you (or one, or in this case ME) feel better.

At the beginning of the summer I was back in therapy asking for help. At one point I was telling my therapist how I really really wanted to write, but every morning I told myself I would get up at 5:30 and write for an hour before my children got up but I could never do it and then I started every day already mad at myself.

"Well," she asked. "Is that realistic?"

I stopped.

"I mean, are you good at getting up in the morning? Have you ever done that?"

Confession: I am horrible at getting up in the morning. I am a night owl, a lazy bones, a slow-waker and a caffeine addict. Only the thought of espresso with cream and sugar can get me up. And even then it is very, very hard.

"No," I said. "But it is the only time I have. I have wracked my brain. There is no other time that is mine. And, even if i could do it in the evening I am usually so tired it is hard to think clearly."

"It sounds like your goal is impossible and is only making you feel bad," she said. "Maybe you should pick something you have a better shot at."

I had never thought of it like that. That I was just setting myself up for failure. And, the lesson went a long way, because I am perpetually setting myself ambitious goals I cannot possibly achieve. And then I just feel really really bad. Don't get me wrong. I am not saying don't dream big. But I am saying, do not set a goal that you literally have almost no chance of achieving--really looking at yourself honestly--or at least no chance of making yourself do.

So I gave up on that one. And instantly I felt so much better. I still want to write. I still try to carve out time. I still wish I could get up at 5:30 and write. But I accept that at this point in my life that particular arrangement is just not going to happen.

Indeed, the liberation from my own unrealistic goal (without relinquishing the larger goal, which was to find time to write) was so freeing that I began to keep a secret list in my journal for no one but me that listed what I had actually done that day--no matter how dull and monotonous and mommy-like. What an education. I was dumbfounded at how much I do each day. Even I had been tricked by own mind constantly telling me what I was not doing. It just made me feel a little gentler with myself--in a secret place for my eyes only. I granted myself patience, thanks, appreciation.

And then I vowed to find a way to write that is a little bit more realistic, a little bit less of a swim-workout type of discipline (and even when I had swim practice at 5:30 a.m. I was a nightmare. I remember being the last one to get into the water, and my coach would have to push me in). Stay tuned and I will let you know how it is going, curious writers!

For now, I must go do on-line traffic school, my due diligence for speeding at 90 m.p.h. on the 5 in Orange County last spring. I was rocking out at such high volume, fantasizing about Big Macs and Large Fries as they flashed by my window in the darkness, so lost in my food hallucinations, that I did not notice the cop with flashing lights bearing down on me and shouting at me through the mounted loudspeaker on the car to GET OFF THE FREEWAY!