Perception

I had a moment today that made me realize just how lucky I am that I survived my teenage years...  I saw a Mom try to give her 13-year-old a hug and tell her something when the teenager turned to her mother and say, "Would you just shut up and get off of me?!"  Unfortunately this scenario is all to familiar to me because that was me and my Mom for several years.  While I could relate to this teen, I felt bad for the Mom because I saw the hurt in her eyes that I ignored in the eyes of my own Mom when I said/did these things to her in my past.  I wanted to tell the girl that there will be a time when she realizes that she doesn't know everything and her Mom was only trying to help her with that sooner in her life.  Looking back, I know that's what I learned from that stage in my life...

Something I'm trying to learn at this stage in my life is how to not allow what other people do/say bother me so much.  I still have the tendency to internalize things, even those things that I should just let slide off my back.  Rather than letting those things bother me, I need to use them as growth opportunities for myself and move on.  I guess I need to go back to the attitude from one of my favorite movies (Fame) and say, "I must remember this feeling and use it in my acting!"

Right now, unfortunately the feeling that has often come to my surface is frustration.  In my opinion I feel as if I'm once again trying to do too many thing for too many different people and I don't know how much longer I'm going to be able to continue at this breakneck pace.  I think that before too much longer I'm going to need to schedule a "me" day in order to do things that I want to do.  This weekend I tried to work on the last baby blanket for the nephews (I have yet to finish the baby blanket for the second baby born last summer) and I ended up falling asleep on the couch mid-stitch.  While that tells me that I haven't been getting enough sleep, I also think it means that my body needed an escape (even if it was just a 1.5 hour nap).

I'm not exactly sure what I would do on my "me" day but one of the things I would love to do before too much longer is to go whale watching again.  I love the freedom and the exhilaration I feel when I'm out on the ocean (I think in another life I must have been a pirate or something) and looking for those magnificent animals.  I think part of what I need to do is take the time for myself, enjoy myself and not feeling guilty for doing so.  That's going to be the biggest challenge for myself -- not feeling guilty for taking time for me.

I know that other people don't feel guilty for taking time for them so I'm not entirely sure why I have a tendency to do so.  I was planning on taking time for myself yesterday (and I even had a plan for my day) and one text message changed all of that.  Someone made me feel as if they needed me and then when I was there, it didn't really feel as if they did.  Because that happened, I didn't accomplish half of what I wanted to for me.  While the things I wanted to do weren't overly exciting, they were how I wanted to spend my day and that didn't get to happen.  One of the things my brother reminded me of is a saying we heard quite often from our parents growing up (and it's something that I think I'm really going to have to get better at using), "poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine."  Maybe if I can do that, I won't feel as if people are taking advantage of me...

I know that this feeling comes from me and that I am the one who can change my feelings and my perception.  I guess this is going to be my challenge to myself -- to work on how I perceive situations and what I am/am not going to let get to me...  We'll see how I do with that.  Since it's been a long week (and I'm not entirely sure what this coming week has in store for me), I think I'm going to bring this to a close and do something for me before going to bed.  Goodnight, dear readers!