So this weekend I had quite the meltdown. I won’t go into the gory details, you’ve all seen it at least once in your life… middle-aged woman realizes she is a lousy friend (and has lost a bunch because of it); is overcome by the magnitude of changing internet providers (okay, that was REAL); determines she has made a MAJOR wrong turn in the career world and put herself in an environment that makes the social cliques (AKA bullies) of high school seem like tender mercies; and forgets to deposit checks summarily bouncing her checkbook for the first time in eons.
yep – tears
(I’m not saying hormones played a role in it – you fill that one in yourself)
I can tell you for sure, that the depression house scene from “What dreams may come” looks very logical when everything falls down. The worst part is it wasn’t really that bad. I mean, yeah I had a hundred bucks in overdraft charges, that was real. I am most certainly not alone and my friends haven’t really abandoned me.
Really, when it is all put nicely in the past, it was a reminder that I need to be in control of my life at some level.
Not a strangle hold of control, but a nice, tidy mindful awareness of my life.
Once upon a time, I budgeted my money really well. I never ran out and I kept a family of four fed, clothed and housed very comfortably on not so pretty an income.
Once upon another time, I gained and subsequently lost a lot of weight. That time it was about budgeting calories.
Today I realized, that even though I intended to live life in a balanced way, I wasn’t budgeting time. I wasn’t honoring the me I found after my divorce, the one who cared about nourishing her soul. Back to the drawing board to learn to budget time.
My list of things:
- Work – about the right amount of time, no reward
- Love – too much time, lots of reward (sorry, babe, I need to balance myself which means time apart)
- Friendships – little to no time, missing SO much here!
- Mental me time (hobbies, reading, etc) – not enough, missing the recharge
- Chores – too much time, doing ALL the wrong things
- Family – too much then not enough, never spent wisely
So, what I need to do is stop, drop and roll! Just kidding, I need to stop and decide just how much time each of these things needs to have and how to make it VALUABLE. Not just spent, spent wisely.
So here is how it breaks down:
- Work
- 40 hours, At work time,no more
- 7.5 hours, Commute – if my commute changes it gets balanced with less commute by working from home
- Sleep
- 56 – that’s 8 hours, every night
- 3.5 – wind down time, read, chillax, whatever it takes to get bed time ready
- Beutification
- 5.25 – dressing it up daily (shower, hair, outfit, the works)
- 1.5 – extra work (pedicure, hair, massage)
- Chillaxin
- 1 hour – TV, hey, we have a show, I like it
- 3 hours – hobbying: sewing, computering, whatever
- 3 hours – reading, keeping the brain sharp
- Getting Physical
- 5 hours – working out, (the calorie budget needs to be revisited too)
- 5 hours – hiking, kayaking, biking, ok museuming, touring, who knows
- Socially Speaking
- 4 hours – my guy, Friday night unless something REALLY weird comes up
- 4 hours – the boys,
- 4 hours – the Toledo family, whatever (ok, so this one may be a “save and spend” caegory. I might need to borrow time from other categories one week to get this in
- 6 hours – FRIENDS, i need salsa time, paint night, and lunch with the girls
- Chores
- 1 hour – bills
- 3 hours – cleaning, yard work, yadda
so… overwhelmed? Me too. But I was spending FAR too much on bills and not enough on Friends, Family, etc. I was all out of whack.
For what it’s worth, that’s less than 153 hours. There’s 168 in a week so I still have 15 to spend and I can’t save them for a rainy day…
Next up, being aware of what I really do… I’ll keep you posted.
