(no subject)
It was a day of strong emotions -- a couple good conversations with friends in person and over the phone, a good but difficult conversation with my sister (she gave me solid, necessary, but very hard to implement advice about handling a situation with my parents), and lots of hard work. Sarah and I did some work on some concerns she's been having, I did some work on some issues that came up today (Mary did a really good, gentle job of calling me on the fact that I was not as calm and collected as I thought I was, with respect to the conversation I'm gonna have to have with my parents, so I worked with that for a bit, and also with the fact that I'm going to be wrapping up therapy in the next couple sessions), and Joe and I did some really good work on the budget. Turns out we really can cut a ridiculous amount just by paying better attention, and we're going to be able to take care of the first of our ten or so urgent financial priorities in just a couple days. I'm feeling *worlds* better about the prospect of getting all the necessary repairs done than I was a few weeks ago.
(I'm also continuing to avoid sweetened drinks, and continuing to be shocked at just how often this is an issue, and how deep the grooves run -- not sure I've ever gone out to eat without getting a soda, until the last couple weeks, and sitting in the diner with catwithbell, today, I was *so proud* of myself for sticking with hot tea (which is technically a sweetened drink, the way I have it, but I declared it okay at the start of this commitment because I have maybe one cup of black tea with sugar a week and for some reason it doesn't give me the rush that cold tea does -- it's not a habit I need to break). It felt like I had to remake the commitment every 10 minutes, the association between diners and soda is so strong and automatic for me.)
I may have mentioned here that I've been working with the Charlotte Mason homeschooling approach for myself, and now we're shifting a bit to use her approach more fully with Sarah. She talks a lot about building habits (working nicely with the daily rhythms we already have in place, since both the inspirations of those rhythms (Waldorf and Flylady) are all about habits and routines), and that feels like it would be very helpful, and would work well with the stuff we already do. The habit I'm working on right now is sticking to our (updated) routines, and the habit I'm working on with Sarah is putting things back where they go. That's aside from the fundamental habit underlying her whole homeschool approach of short lessons followed by narration, which is the habit of attention and focused work.
There's a lot of hard work going on, right now, but I'm feeling really good about it, about where it's taking me. It's exhausting but deeply satisfying.
(I'm also continuing to avoid sweetened drinks, and continuing to be shocked at just how often this is an issue, and how deep the grooves run -- not sure I've ever gone out to eat without getting a soda, until the last couple weeks, and sitting in the diner with catwithbell, today, I was *so proud* of myself for sticking with hot tea (which is technically a sweetened drink, the way I have it, but I declared it okay at the start of this commitment because I have maybe one cup of black tea with sugar a week and for some reason it doesn't give me the rush that cold tea does -- it's not a habit I need to break). It felt like I had to remake the commitment every 10 minutes, the association between diners and soda is so strong and automatic for me.)
I may have mentioned here that I've been working with the Charlotte Mason homeschooling approach for myself, and now we're shifting a bit to use her approach more fully with Sarah. She talks a lot about building habits (working nicely with the daily rhythms we already have in place, since both the inspirations of those rhythms (Waldorf and Flylady) are all about habits and routines), and that feels like it would be very helpful, and would work well with the stuff we already do. The habit I'm working on right now is sticking to our (updated) routines, and the habit I'm working on with Sarah is putting things back where they go. That's aside from the fundamental habit underlying her whole homeschool approach of short lessons followed by narration, which is the habit of attention and focused work.
There's a lot of hard work going on, right now, but I'm feeling really good about it, about where it's taking me. It's exhausting but deeply satisfying.