-Read a lot of books that changed my life, titles and more details to come. For now, here are some things I've started thanks to my life-changing reads:
-started cloth diapering, after dozens of hours of research and funding from my weaselby's profits
-started cloth diapering, after dozens of hours of research and funding from my weaselby's profits
-developed a detailed and functional family budget (my computer is stuffed with MORE spreadsheets)
-started making homemade baby food
-started planning out dinners a month at a time
-Got a lot of orders and sold a lot of stuff in the shop. I think I've made about 60 more parrots, but I really don't want to go back and count them all.
-Worked a tiny little bit on Ezra's costume.
-Got Ezra and myself into a weekly playgroup. (By the way, this is one of the VERY few times where "myself" is grammatically correct to use. Ah, perhaps a future post on my grammatical pet peeves...?)
-Started shooting up Copaxone every night.
-Had a lot of paradigm shifts and epiphanies.
So I've been up to a lot. There have been a ton more little nagging issues eating away at my brain and keeping me up when I should sleep and thwarting any effort to take a break and relax. Out of desperation, I developed a technique I call "Buzzing Brain List" or "Fevered Brain List" or "My Head is Going to Explode if I Have to Think of One More Thing."
The problem: I have so many things flying around my brain at any given moment that I can't sort through them all to do anything constructive with them, so I just get caught up in the frantic buzzing and kind of sit in a stupor feeling completely defeated and disheartened with no idea where to start.
The solution: Late one night, I couldn't calm my brain down to go to sleep. So I got up to write out my goals for the next few days in my planner (I'm addicted to my planner) and realized, looking at the 8 1/2 x 11" expanse crammed full with my stressed, cramped writing, I had a ton to do. I wanted to write it all down on a list and leave it out for my husband to see so he would feel bad for me and my harried self, and then maybe I would feel less guilty about having to cook so many Birdseye Voila! frozen dinner bags (those things are AWESOME, by the way). So I wrote it all down and, WOW, my brain took a big sigh and felt blissfully vacant. And I went to sleep.
How I think it works: If I write something down, I give my brain permission to forget it (which is why it's important that I never ever lose my planner). So, having vomited all my pestering thoughts onto paper, my brain didn't have to desperately cling to the huge load of worries. The next morning, I discovered another benefit to writing my list: I could look at everything and determine what I could do something about, and what was just fruitless fretting. For the things that I couldn't do anything about, I simply crossed it off my list and deleted it from the obsessive-worrier part of my brain. For the things that I wasn't sure if I could help or not, I put in parentheses and moved them to the back burner to be revisited once the things that needed my attention were done. For the things that I could do something about, I wrote down what I needed to do and by when. I also numbered everything, with #1 being the most important thing and needed to be done first, all the way down the number line. Then I plugged it all into my planner and got to work with a much clearer and relaxed mind, and I actually used my energy constructively instead of feverishly flitting from one unfinished project to the next while using half of my precious brain power to worry about stuff I couldn't do anything about.
IT WAS AMAZING.
That was about two weeks ago. It was so great. I felt so relaxed, sane, and productive.
That was two weeks ago. I need to write out my list again.
But I've crossed off a to-do in writing this post. :)
