Perils of Pauline

I hadn't heard the term "Perils of Pauline" before but I heard it today; the "Perils of Pauline" refers to the old black & white films where the damsel in distress is hauled off by the sinister guy with a fabulous mustache who ties her to the railroad track, and the train is coming, and the hero comes along only to have to get in a fistfight with the sinister guy with the mustache, and the good guy is able to save the girl in the split second before she gets squished by the train...  Whew.  I know that was a run on sentence but it was written that way to make my point - sometime life hands you one thing after another after another and you sometimes just have to wait for the moment where you don't get squished.  As I've written before, I am not the damsel in distress type however, there are times (especially when I'm not feeling 100%) where it would be nice to have someone save me from being squished by the train.  This past week has left me feeling that I was mostly squished by the train because I couldn't break free from the train tracks.

I was still pretty sick most of the week and I think from being sick I have also developed an ear infection - lucky me...  I don't necessarily want to go back to the doctor because I think I've already met my quota of doctor's for awhile.  I had to go to the doctor in December and then this past week, I was at the doctor's twice - once at the health clinic to find out why I'm sick and then again during the week I had to go to the work heath clinic for my yearly work clearance.  Both of the visits this past week helped to solidify why I don't like going to the doctor - without helping to explain how, both doctors instructed me that I need to lose quite a bit of weight (like upwards of 100 pounds).  It's all well and good that they want me to lose the weight but it's not helpful that they didn't give me any insight as to how to accomplish said goal.  It just helps add to the frustration that is my weight...

Something else that added to my frustration this past week was work.  I unfortunately did not embrace my mantra of "not my circus, not my monkeys" and I let people over task me with things and when I attempted to delegate, I listened to all the reasons why people couldn't take on those responsibilities and I took them on myself.  Not only am I frustrated with them for not taking on what I asked them to, I am frustrated with myself for allowing them to get away with telling me no.  By allowing them to not complete assigned tasks, they are getting what they want and I'm the one who ends up overworked and frustrated - this is something that I realize but have yet to come up with how to remedy the situation...

Because I've been frustrated/sick/tired, it tends to make me layer on my pieces of armor and shut out those around me.  I know that it's not good to keep things bottled up and it's very tiring carrying around all that armor all the time...  Maybe I'm afraid to show what's underneath the armor for fear of what happened the last time I let someone get past it all (and I know intellectually that too many years have past for it to still effect me and that also intellectually I'm going to have to let someone through the armor one of these days) but I also know that without change, you cannot grow.  Sometimes it's so frustrating to be an adult...

I know that I need to find a way to move beyond my frustrations in order for me to function but I'm not not quite sure how I'm going to do that yet.  I suppose in an effort to start to ease my frustrations I should focus on the things that I can change/control and in doing so it might help me feel better.  In order to set a goal for myself, I am challenging myself to set aside at least one piece of my armor and keep it off for the entire week.  We'll see how this goes...  Thank you for joining me, my dear readers and I hope you can do something for you in the upcoming week!  =)