Grass Stains Saturday

So happy to see kids enjoy this much over something that doesn't include swiping their fingers all over an electronic device.  

The kid and his dad =)

Kids

The Kids. Again.

Dancing to the Beat of His Own Drums

Still Dancing

Brave Girls

Friends

Boys

Still the Boys

When You Can Imagine the Laughter from the Photo

This is the Life

Sorry I got lazy and didn't even bother properly saving the photos.  Just follow the link =)  I promise it will make you smile, too.  

Hoarders: Emotions Edition

I’ve been doing some cleaning and I’ve noticed that I have an excessive collection of this and that (read: Giant Book of Word Games 4, 8, 1, 19, and 27, my favorite shirt from the 5^th grade, the box that the bracelet Charles game me 8 years ago came in, and a handful of unopened bills).  My reluctance to discard those ostensibly useless objects makes me think that I may have a wee bit of a problem with hoarding. 

Looking at what seemed to be the last 10 years of my life spread all over my closet floor, I thought, “Why on earth did I hold on to these?”  I’m pretty certain that I had good, valid, and compelling reasons at the time, but sitting there surrounded by my “collection”, my mind is drawing a blank. 

I rummaged a bit more and found a bunch of journals (circa 1996-2006) wrapped in an old shirt that was most likely outdated since before I hit puberty, at the bottom of a box labeled Christmas lights.  Completely abandoning our immediate need for closet space, I sat down to read the entries and came to the conclusion that, yes, a person can indeed go through second-hand embarrassment for herself.  And, yes, it was that mortifying.  It got me thinking about how I tend to “keep” things not just physically, but emotionally as well. 

I’ve been going around hauling hurt and anger that came from things that happened months ago.  Maybe I suffer from an inability to process emotions, or maybe I can’t get over them as quickly as I should because the person that hurt me is someone I didn’t believe could.  Either way, I feel like an emotional hoarder clinging on to memories and feelings that I should have let go of. 

But letting go is hard, especially since there’s a part of me that stupidly and genuinely believes that there are “dead” relationships that can spring back to life.  It reminds me of a friend’s Facebook status:

“Before you give up, think of the reasons why you held on so long.”

I guess I’m still holding on to the good memories:  lovely words spoken at the time I needed it the most, mere presence that I took in as sunshine during my dark hours, laughter until my face felt like it was going to crack, food like there’s no tomorrow, and drinks like there’s no such thing as hangovers … the list could go on.    And even with the knowledge that letting those memories reside in my head and in my heart goes hand in hand with remembering the hurt, I still keep hoarding. 

So now, I’m doing some cleaning.  I will no longer hoard this way because I realize it will never fill the void.  It’s like holding a key to my own prison cell and I’m not even using it to get out.  I will no longer be afraid that nothing else will come to occupy that space because I trust that the universe has got me.

Yep.  The universe has my back =)

The One with Ross' Tan

The One with Ross’ Tan

The first time I saw this episode, I laughed hard – it was classic Ross.  This was also the one where Stifler’s mom, Jennifer Coolidge, guest-starred as Amanda Buffamonteezi.  In this episode, Monica and Phoebe decide to cut her off.   I remember how I laughed at the hilarity and absurdity of the lengths they went through to completely ignore Amanda’s attempts to get in touch and get together with them.  I saw this again the other day, but I didn’t laugh anymore.  The notion of cutting someone off went back and forth in my head, and like a wave of nausea sweeping over me, I realize that I am Amanda Buffamonteezi.

I’ve never been cut off before so the feeling is very foreign to me.  It has messed up my headspace and I feel really crappy.  There wasn’t a massive fight or a huge disagreement that signaled the conclusion of the friendship.  I feel like it just fell apart.

I think it was almost a year ago that I read a Facebook note that wasn’t very nice, and I had reasons to think it might be about me.  Now, I’m the kind of person who likes life uncomplicated.  I’m the type who calls when I want to talk, invites myself or asks to meet when I want to see someone, and the type who explains or tries to explain when I feel like I’ve been misunderstood.  Even though most of the things written didn’t apply to me, I still couldn’t shake off the suspicion.  In the end, the paranoid in me won.  I asked if the note was about me and was told that it wasn’t. 

I’m not a human polygraph.  I have no idea if a person is lying to me unless he or she is sweating bullets and is looking everywhere except at me.  I was inclined to believe this person because we’ve been friends for a long time, but the funny feeling in the pit of my stomach wouldn’t go away.  I didn’t want to be called a drama queen so I didn’t press on the issue, but I did distance myself away from that friend.  I wanted to ask why she felt that way, but I couldn’t because she’d already told me it wasn’t about me.  I wanted to tell her that if the note WAS about me, she was wrong.  I wanted to take her by the shoulders, give her a gentle shake, and tell her that she has no reason to feel that way about me because I’ve done nothing wrong to her, or any of her loved one for that matter.  I wanted to demand what made her think that way, but I gave her the benefit of the doubt.  I believed her because that’s what friends do.  Friends don’t just wake up one day and decide to pull something out of a magic hat and use it as a reason to hate on someone and write a passive-aggressive note about it on a social networking site.    

Yes, there was a lot left unsaid, and I guess we resorted to just sweeping everything under the rug.  For a while, things were almost back to normal, until that one event they forgot to tell me about.  I understand that it was an honest mistake.  As someone who would undoubtedly forget to put on my limbs had they been detachable, I understand how inviting a friend who’s been coming in and out of your house for numerous years whether they’re invited or not would escape you.  It was not a big deal.  The thing that got and hurt me the most was that when I brought it to her attention, she kind of dismissed it.  Yea, I’m all for not blowing things out of proportion, but if someone is trying to let you know that she felt kind of left out, the least you could do is listen and not talk to her condescendingly.  I know all about how life can get hectic so she didn’t need to go off reciting a plethora of reasons why I became the last person on Earth she wanted to talk to.  I was deeply hurt by that.  She made me feel like a petulant child throwing a tantrum because I wanted to sit at the grownup table during a fancy dinner but was told to stay with the other kids. 

Try as I may to ignore the feeling of being left out, I felt the friendship change.  I’ve never broken up with a boyfriend before, but I’ve come extremely close to, and this feeling of losing a friend is, in some ways, harder.  Everybody understands that relationships tend to be fleeting, but friendships are supposed to withstand the test of time, and friends don’t just up and go.  Physically or emotionally.  I cannot even begin to explain the degree of how this sucks. 

On one hand, I wanted to take her word for it.  This is, after all, the person who’s given me relationship advices without sugarcoating anything.  On the other hand, though, all the signs point to being cut off.  I feel like the person who cried on my couch before because the family and the boyfriend are like oil and water is someone I wouldn’t be able to talk to about the weather anymore.  Was it my lack of effort?  I honestly have no idea.  I was happy to be a source of comfort, albeit only a little, during those times when she was having relationship problems.  It felt good that she trusted me enough to confide in me what she was going through at that time, but I know it would feel better if she cared about me enough to share with me how good she has it right now.  I want to tell her I can see she’s happy, but I feel like I can’t.  And it’s not like I can’t reach her…I feel like she doesn’t want to be reached. 

I know that change is the only thing that’s constant in this life.  It is that dynamic force of nature that we will never be able to run away from.  I’ve tried to console myself with valid reasons why I’m being treated differently than before – new relationships, hectic work or school schedule, just busy with life – but it leaves me feeling casted off and, quite honestly, confused and a bit angry. 

I feel kind of abandoned, and I ask myself if I was ever truly considered a friend in the first place, or I got to be a part of her life because I just wouldn’t go away, or just because it was convenient.   I’ve gone as far as to  get a card so I could write how I feel and how I miss the friendship, but my pride made me put it away – I didn’t want to be the needy girl who begged for friendship.  The witch in me who has her middle finger all geared up stopped me from using the card.  The next time I felt the sadness take over me, I wrote on the card with every intention of giving it, but the angry one of my multiple personalities smacked me on the head and asked why I should shoulder all the responsibility of bridging the gap when I did nothing to put it there in the first place.  It seems as if baring the way I feel would just be like creating my own torture device because I might just be given a blank stare that screams, “What the frog is wrong with you?”

I still have the card.  I think I’ll give it the next time I feel like the friendship that I valued so much because it’s brought me a lot of joy and comfort is going down the toilet and into the sewer.  I guess I’m not giving it because I’m not brave enough to face the realities of a strained friendship. 

I am very well aware that you can’t keep each and every single person that enters your life, but to feel like you’ve lost someone so important to you is something that you can never be prepared for, especially if you have no idea why that person is pulling away from you in the first place.  Maybe I want to get to the bottom of things because there’s so much surrounding the situation that I know nothing about.  I can’t express how grateful I am that she was there during the dark times of my life, but I would also like for her to be here so I can share how bright my life is at the moment.  But no matter how good I have it right now, there would always be this weird feeling that there’s something missing.  Someone missing. 

Maybe we’ll reestablish the friendship, or maybe we’ll just be two people who used to know each other. I don’t know.  I just don’t know.  Maybe I should stop chasing someone who is clearly running away from me, but I just couldn’t let it go because that someone is a friend who became family, although she’s kind of turning into a stranger now.  Maybe I should just let go of this person who obviously doesn’t care enough about me to think that I deserve to know the reason why all of a sudden, I’m not welcomed in her life anymore.  Maybe I should just not care because she evidently doesn’t.  I’ve always been loyal to my friends to a fault, but maybe this time, I should just stick my middle finger up and say, “Up yours.”  Problem is I am not that kind of friend. Maybe I’m a glutton for punishment, just waiting for that person to say, “Get the eff out of my life,” as if the signs weren’t already saying that. 

But until those maybes become certainties, I want to fix it.  I just don’t know if you do.  I want to say, “You know where to find me,” but I’m afraid you won’t come.  So for now, just know that despite my confusion, hurt, and anger, I’m here. 

You know where to find me.    

Spring Snow

I guess when you prematurely welcome spring with arms wide open while winter barely has one foot out the door, you get snow again.  However, I am unlike those who constantly complain about the weather because I have long accepted and embraced the fact that there are four seasons whether I like it or not.  Complaining will not get me warm.  It will not moisturize my skin, make the roads less slippery, or reduce the windchill.  So when it snowed, instead of whining that we can’t go to the park, I said a silent thanks that I haven’t put away our winter gear (see, procrastination sometimes works to my advantage).  It’s not every day that we get to experience the beautiful snow without the harshness of winter, so I grabbed the camera, and went outside with the kids.  There is something that is so pure and beautiful watching kids play in the snow.  You get to see the joy that comes with building snowmen, making snow angels, throwing snowballs at each other, and trying to catch snowflakes with their tongues. And when we were done, we got to warm up inside with hot chocolate, complete with marshmallows and whipped cream.

=)

Spring Has Sprung

The transition period between winter and summer is finally here.  While the most beautiful season for me is autumn, I love spring, too.  Words like renewal, rebirth, and regrowth have been associated with this season, and this year, I want to sort of celebrate it as a chance to renew myself and my life. 

I’m not saying that I’m only going to work on being a better person during an equinox.  It’s just that this is the season when we wave goodbye to the iciness of winter, and try to persuade ourselves that it is time to pack up the winter boots and jackets, because it is now suitable to start wearing light sweaters and Chuck Taylors.  The days get longer and longer, and I fantasize about more trips to the park, patio-dining, and barbeques.  The sidewalks are wet with the remnants of winter, the flowers are beginning to bloom, and the trees are starting to leaf. 

In spite of the harshness of winter, spring comes and nature is reactivated.

In spite of the harshness of life, chances to start over arrive and you are renewed.    

I will take advantage of everything that’s blossoming to facilitate my own growth. 

Spring isn’t just for the trees and flowers to begin growing again, for birds to start their singing, or for bears to come out of hibernation. 

It is also for me – for my soul, for my spirit. 

I will stop trying to fight changes that I have no control over, and let myself be a part of its natural cycles instead of being a mere bystander to my own life. 

I will stop being too quick to judge situations as challenges because they just might be rooms for improvement in disguise. 

I will no longer leave space in my life for negativity, especially other people’s. 

I will muster enough courage to try something new, be it food, pastime, or courses of study. 

I will stop caring about what people think of me because it just doesn’t matter.

I will start spending time with people who are not afraid to embrace me.  Physically and emotionally.  Also unconditionally.

Spring reminds me that we are made to withstand seasons of change.  We are ever-changing, forever-growing.  The sooner we know and accept that, the sooner we will reach our greatest and most beautiful potential. 

  

Goodbye, winter.

Hello, spring.

"Shush"i

Yesterday was Charles’ birthday and we went to an all-you-can-eat sushi restaurant with friends.  While I was paying the bill, Charles headed out to heat up the car.  Chayce went after him, asking if we were going to go to the movie theater after.  Since Charles was already by the door, Chayce had to use a voice that was a bit above what we call an “indoor voice” – the kind of voice he knows he has to use if we were at a museum, library, church, hospital, or restaurant.  When Chayce passed this one table, an old(er) lady leaned closer to the aisle, toward Chayce, and said, “Shush!” as if we were at the library, and she was the librarian reprimanding Chayce for clapping like a monkey using cymbals. 

I.  SAW.  RED.

We’ve never had problems with Chayce at restaurants.  He’s never been the kind of kid who would disturb other diners’ gastronomic experience with harsh cries, or loud protests when his food takes forever to arrive.  He has never sprinkled anyone with salt, jumped up and down our booth, flung dessert, or bumped into waiters because he was running up and down the aisle.  Apart from his sporadic singing of Tagalog songs (in a reasonable volume), he is generally good. 

So I stopped in front of the lady and asked her, “Did you just ‘shush’ my child?” 

She pretended not to hear me, and started to pour soy sauce in that little rectangular saucer for her sushi that wasn’t even there yet. 

I asked again.  “Did you.  Just.  Shush.  My. My, not your, child?” 

She looked up and just stared at me stupidly.  If she was trying to communicate with me telepathically, I have no idea.  Before I walked away, I told her, “You do not ‘shush’ someone else’s child.  You tell the parent if the child is disrupting your meal, but do not tell a kid to be quiet especially when he isn’t even loud to begin with.  This is not a library.  This is not a church.  If you wanted to eat in peace and quiet, go back home and eat by yourself.  Or go have a picnic at a cemetery.  You look like you should already be six feet under there anyway.” 

The last sentence was said in my mind. 

Maybe I shouldn’t have done that; I had no idea what that lady’s story was.  Maybe she was already having an off day.  Maybe she just discovered that her husband was cheating on her when she followed him to the movie theater, so the last thing she wanted to hear was a kid who's overly excited to go to one.  I don’t know.  All I know is that I didn’t want to leave with this lady thinking she had every right to tell my kid to keep quiet when, number 1: Chayce wasn’t even loud, and number 2: the place was 2 paper lanterns and 1 bird origami above a flippin’ fast food so she shouldn’t expect an atmosphere akin to a five-star restaurant.

I generally avoid confrontations, especially in public places.  I am an advocate of the smartness of walking away from fights, but one thing I’ve discovered from being a mother is that I can be scared and brave at the same time.  Thinking about how uncertain our futures are, or that someone might bully Chayce when he goes to school, I get scared like a germaphobe is scared of that .1% of bacteria that Lysol just could not kill.  And then there are times like this when my inner wiatch comes out, and I just couldn’t walk away without giving the source of my aggravation a piece of my mind.      

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaand rant over.  

Back to my regular programming, folks.

Date a Girl Who Writes

Date a girl who writes.  She might be a bit difficult to find because she’s content to be in the background, watching people from afar.  She searches their faces and body languages for something she can infuse her fictional characters with.  The girl in her story will bear a striking resemblance to the waitress at the coffee shop she frequents, and you will recognize yourself in her hero because he sleeps the way you do – on your side, with knees a bit drawn up – and makes the heroine laugh with the kind of humor that she tells you just makes her day.

When you see the girl who writes, you’ll know it’s her.  She’s the one with ink-stained fingertips and a callused middle finger from the pressure of pens and other writing instruments.  She will also seem like a good candidate for Extreme Hoarders: the Notebook Edition.  Notebooks!  Journals!  Diaries!  She carries one with her at all times, and another one in the car.  Some blank, most are filled.  The ones that are full of entries are hidden all over the house:  on the bookshelf, behind books she thinks no one will read; in the cupboard, beneath the fine china that’s taken out only once a year; and under the mattress, where it is too predictable that it will be the last place anyone would look. 

Date a girl who writes because she will romance you with words.  She can – and will – find a thousand different reasons why you’re the one she loves, and then she’ll tell you those in about a hundred different ways.  She will give you love letters.  Regularly.  You will be looking forward to finding quirky notes from her in your socks, in the pockets of your favorite jacket, or taped on the cd she knows you listen to on your way to work.  On your special days, don’t count on her leaving you a wall post on Facebook; she finds that utterly impersonal.  What you can count on is receiving the greatest love letter you will ever read in your entire life.  Until she writes you another one, that is. 

Give her a hand-written letter in return.  She might release a sigh of exasperation over the absence of an apostrophe when you wrote “Its you I want to spend the rest of my life with,” but you would have also taken her breath away.  A girl who writes understands the importance of the written word. You will never regret pouring your heart and soul into doing that because that will make her love you even more.  

Fail her.  A girl who writes knows that in the middle of every story, difficulties happen.  She understands that with life comes conflict, and she looks forward to the denouement where tensions subside and loose ends are tied.  She will forgive you because she is prone to viewing love through rose-tinted glasses.  She will give you a second chance just like she’ll write her book another chapter.  But don’t take advantage of her.  Do not be a distracting subplot that takes the focus away from the main story.  She might be disinclined to write you off because you are her favorite, but she is aware that characters carrying dead weight could hold her story back.  She will be sad when you go, but her life will go on.  She will write another chapter without you in it.  She will get over you. 

Be patient with her.  A girl who writes has her idiosyncrasies.  She believes non-readers are treacherous to the human race, so pretend it doesn’t bother you when she wrinkles her nose and rolls her eyes when you talk about your friend whose fondest memory of books was when he used one to kill a spider.  Resist the urge to cover her mouth, or tell her to “shut up” when she tells you how she would do a movie, a book, or a commercial differently.  When she proceeds to tell you how exactly she’d do it “her way” (translation: the right way), just think about how much you love her.  Or mentally count to a hundred.  Slowly.  When she’s upset, allow her to throw words around – figuratively and literally.  When her diary lands on your feet (or slams on your chest/head), she is telling you to stop wasting your time asking, and start reading.  If she walks away, leaving her innermost thoughts in your hands, she is giving you permission to read everything in it.  She is inviting you to enter the world as she sees it because she wants to navigate it with you. 

Date a girl who writes because you will never be terrified to be yourself around her.  Let her peel off your layers because she understands the complexity of your character.  She will also remind you that while money may matter, it’s not everything.  People who write for a living don’t do it to get wealthy.

 Date a girl who writes because she will make dreaming even more beautiful.  The dreams you can easily turn into reality – the big house with a pool, two kids (a girl and a boy) with dark eyes and even darker hair, a career that will allow you to give not only the things that your family needs, but the TIME that they need, and a dog – will be interwoven with fantasies she has imagined for you.  The house will be in a place where the ocean is in your backyard, and you can lie down on the sand while you try to locate the Great Bear and the Seven Stars.  Your children will inherit the best in both of you, and their names will have wonderful stories behind them.   Your job will give you the means to ensure that your little boy has the complete Thomas the Tank train set, and your little girl goes to science camp and ballet classes, while allowing you to be an actual presence in their lives to guide them as they grow up.  And that dog?  You will adopt that three-legged stray, and she will be torn between naming it Boo Radley or Anais Nin. 

Date a girl who writes because you deserve it.  Because when the cold winter of life that is old age descends upon you, she will be there to describe the warm summers at the beach when you felt the sand on your feet, and let the waves lick it away; the balmy spring evenings when you dined al fresco, and took long hand-in-hand walks; and the crisp autumn days when you took pleasure in the sight of the leaves bathed in the colors of the sunset.  She will never let the moments that have passed be forgotten, or its moods be gone, because she will recapture it with her pen, paper, and heart.   With the girl who writes, you get to live life twice. 

The Little Man Turns 4

My little man turns 4 tomorrow.   He proves not only that time flies, but that my heart can walk outside of my body.  He changed my life the moment we decided we were going to try to have a baby, and he is still changing it in the most beautiful way possible. 

Happy birthday, Chayce – we love you very much!

Photos from Saturday:

No Looking Back

I am almost 32 and my closest friends are the ones that I’ve known from 23 years ago when I was in 5^th grade, 18 years ago when I was in high school, 15 years ago when I was in college, and a handful from 11 years ago when we moved here in Canada from the Philippines.  I’m not saying I didn’t make new friends along the way, or that I am not open to creating new friendships, but there’s something about old friends that’s just so much sweeter than new ones.  I’ve always been a believer that “friends are family you choose for yourself” and it saddens me to think that I’ve had to chop down that “family tree” once.  It’s even sadder that I’ve had to do it in my mid-20s, when people were supposed to have let go of the kind of mentality similar to that of a high school cheerleader that bullies the nerd, or that of the popular girls clawing at each other’s throats on their quest to be even more popular.  However, no matter how heartbreaking it is to sever ties with someone who has held your hair away from your face while you puke your guts out after a night of drinking and karaoke, or held your hand while you were crying over a fight with your boyfriend, you just have to do it.  When the person who told you that you were going to be the godmother of her next child becomes the person who told your closest friends that you said something awful about them when in reality, she was the one who said the ugly words, it’s time to take the axe out and chop her out of your life.  As hackers of life Marc and Angel said, “Life is too short to spend time with people who suck the happiness out of you.”

I know that time heals wounds, yaddi, yadda, yadda, but I wish they’d also said that those wounds become scars.  Some of them fade over time; when you can barely notice them anymore, you kind of forget where, when and how they happened, or who caused them in the first place.  They would be the kind of experience that you know you’ve gone through, but can’t remember the specifics, because they’re not significant.  On the other hand, some of those scars are ugly and continue to be painful reminders, making you feel like there’s always something missing, just like atrophic scars leave the skin looking like there’s a hole on it.  These are the kind of scars that hold you back.

The person who caused this ugly scar is no longer a part of my life.  I forgave her not because she’s worthy of being forgiven, but because I deserve (and need) peace of mind.  I read somewhere that the Aramaic word for “forgive” literally translates to “untie,” and that’s exactly what I did.  It wasn’t easy, though, because she was not a stranger.  She wasn’t just a random passerby in my life; our sharing went from clothes to dreams, conversations from trivial to profound, and acceptance from taste in music to the kind of person we were at our worst.  Or so I thought.  Moving on from the unpleasant experience was like pulling teeth.  After the initial shock of her betrayal wore off, hurt gave way to anger.  I wanted to tell everyone what she did because her lies put me in such a bad spot with people that I care about.  I didn’t want the people she lied to mistaking my silence for guilt, so for a while, I told the story of how I was badly hurt and disgustingly wronged.  I realized later on that I wasn’t doing myself, or the people around me, any favor.  Rehashing the events was only holding me back from moving on, so I took a deep breath – several hundred deep breaths as a matter of fact – and released.    

I’ve reflected over the problem for a time before I maneuvered my car into a different road.  I got lost several times; I made the mistake of refocusing on the depressive part of the incident rather than looking at the big picture and how it strengthened me, and berated myself over my inability to get over it quickly.  I learned how to be kinder to myself, though.  I started to understand that how I felt toward her does not affect her.  At all.  She’s gone on with her life as if she didn’t try to turn my friends against me without giving it another thought.  I had to do the same. 

It’s been over 5 years.  I see her around, and it’s amazing how her presence no longer brings the mild discomfort of wanting to strangle some(body)thing.  The words we’ve exchanged so far have not gone beyond what one might talk to a new acquaintance about.  She once tried to bring up what happened, but her apology seemed to me as if she was saying, “sorry you found out I lied” instead of “sorry I lied.”  I’m sure she finds no joy in harming others, but she scares me.  As much as I hate to admit it, there’s still something in her that activates my “tummy voices.” 

I look back into it, and while I still can’t fathom how something like that could happen to two people who used to seem like they were going to be friends until their children have children, it no longer affects me.  The scar is still here.  I see it during times when I find myself wanting to pull back from the people that I consider true friends because of this fear that something like that would happen again, and I see it when paranoia creeps in and I feel like the people I’m supposed to trust are still talking behind my back about what happened, and are treating me based on the lies they’ve heard from that ex-friend.  But I quickly recover, and those feelings of doubt never get to govern my actions. 

The blessings that I silently send her way have evolved from empty and contrived to non-sarcastic, genuine ones.  I no longer wish for the “good Lord to take her away,” but wish her all the best.  The positivity I give off is returned to me several times over, and it makes life better. 

A lot better.

Ending Procrastination...Later

I’m not one for New Year’s resolutions mainly because the things that I promise to do on so many firsts of January get broken by the 10th at the latest.  I won’t beat myself up over past resolutions that stopped at the fun I had listing them down, but I know that certain life changes are in order.  Since I can’t go back to my beginnings – those days when I was pretty sure I was going to change for the better – that were screwed up by my superb ability to procrastinate, I’m just going to try to create a new ending.  I think fresh starts are overrated.  T.S. Eliot said, “What we call the beginning is often the end.  And to make an end is to make a beginning.  The end is where we start from.” 

So here’s to ending procrastination. 

I’m going to have to end the habit of following “I must do this” with “but it doesn’t have to be now.”  Yes, there’s a lot to be done, but not too much to not have time to accomplish it all.  In order for me to stop feeling like I’m drowning in a sea of things to do, I must stop thriving on deadline-induced panics. 

I need to stop overwhelming myself by setting unrealistic goals.  It would be awesome to write down “clean the house” on my list of to-dos and cross it out once it’s done, but the truth is, if you run a home day care and your own four-year old is with you 24/7, that item will perpetually be number one on your list.  Because I want to cross that out at some point in THIS lifetime, and I want to get rid of this general feeling of irritation when I see something I should’ve done yesterday but didn’t because my subconscious automatically listed off reasons it would be better done “tomorrow,” I am learning to break down the chores, and list them off in the most practical way possible.  It’s all about baby steps.  I can’t just “donate Chayce’s old toys” when I can’t even see the floor of his room, or tell whether the orange lump inside Mr. Potato Head is dried up Play-Doh or an extremely old Cheetos puff.  I need to first separate the toys he actually plays with from the ones he thought he would play with forever at the time he was convincing me to buy it, but forgot all about it exactly 2 hours after.  Similarly, I can’t just “lose 50 lbs in X months” without first realizing that I need to stop taking my body for granted.  Before I commit myself to an everyday workout routine, I need to take Coca-Cola and chocolates off my list of basic food groups.  Trying to lose a dress size (or two) while still consuming an awful large amount of processed food produced from the seed of the tropical cacao tree chased down by carbonated soft drink is like taking 3 steps back and gaining 5 lbs for each step forward. 

Procrastination is also the reason why this blog has been neglected.  I made a promise before to write every single day no matter how trivial and mundane my day was.  Andy Warhol didn’t care that his entry for March 11, 1978 is “I had a lot of dates but decided to stay home and dye my eyebrows.”  I said to myself that I could do that and write about how I decided to pluck my eyebrows after I looked in the mirror and thought for a second that I saw Frida Kahlo looking back at me.   Of course Andy Warhol more than made up for that boring entry by having the rest of his diary laden with names like Liz Taylor and Muhammad Ali, while I have nothing else.  So instead of feeling like a failure, I’ve broken down the writing “chore” and vowed to just write every Monday, hence, the name change. 

So here I am again in another attempt to stop procrastinating and start writing regularly.  I know it takes great willpower, but I’m starting small.   As I’ve said, it’s all about baby steps.  ‘til next week!