Thursday, January 24, 2013

Small victories are still victories!

Jody asked if she could bring the dogs over to my place today while her house is being inspected.  I said sure, but to watch out for Riley being territorial. Solo will be a non-issue, as she will hide under the bed.

We met up at the park for a walk this past weekend and Lucy promptly rolled in poop.  Then Snoopy ate some poop.  Jody asked if I would like to take her dogs for about a week or so.  Maybe they did something worse last night and she is actually just leaving them at my house permanently today.

I get to escape early today and that is still not enough to keep me from being bored to tears.  I've had a couple interesting calls and those were nice- I got compliments and appreciation- but otherwise, this is a boring job.  I got put in two different workgroups for a pilot program, so those days are stressful, but how nice to have chaos and deadlines and stress for a change!  Plus, I've got this class and its homework and implied obligation to become a LEADER.

I read last night about envy and pride.  Envy is useful because it inspires you to strive harder for the things you see that other people have.  So there's that idea about surrounding yourself with successful people- it's for the envy.  That seems a little less altruistic...  And then there's pride.  I loved this and cut out the blurb because this researcher says he thought depressed people had an unrealistically low level of self-worth, and it turns out that people who do not suffer from depression just have an unrealistically HIGH level of self-worth.  Denial is the antidote to anxiety.  I should not question my kitchen safety skills- I should believe that I could teach Home Ec!  Well, maybe it's more like confidence pointed in the right direction would be helpful.

And while I'm on the subject, let me just tell you how productive I became again.  I have this list of projects and the list looms when I am writing lists about what I need to do.  I'm starting to think that lists may not be my friends.  I started one project, got about halfway through (in one night!) and now I feel like it's almost done, so I may as well finish it!  I started reading my book for the class and got halfway through AND wrote notes!  Now I know how much time it will take to finish the book and I can start writing my essay.

What these workgroups are teaching me is that it doesn't matter how far off the mark you are- the important thing is to start the project.  Get anything going and edit from there.  What I ended up with yesterday may not be perfect, but all I needed was a starting point- something to gather feedback with- and I created something way better than that.  It needs tweaks, but it is something solid and clear.

Finally (and this seems small, but I find it important), I have this box of brain teasers from the thrift store that I bought maybe last spring.  Ant and I looked at a couple, and my idea was that we could read one every day.  Instead, they sat on a shelf until Chris broke up with me and I moved out.  I've had that box sitting by my microwave ever since I unpacked- intending to give myself that daily mental workout- and I finally figured out that I needed to take the damn cards out of the box!  The deck of cards is sitting unconstrained on my microwave and I read them as I am nuking the cat food or making breakfast.  I did this maybe a week or so ago, and I am already halfway through the cards!  When I'm done, I'll pack them up and donate them back to the thrift store.  I'm figuring out how to make these intentions into reality.  That feels like something to celebrate.

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