More accountable

The week of February 28 through March 6, 2011 did not go as planned. I ended up working five straight days of overtime and coming home mentally and emotionally wrung out from spending the last 4 hours of the day being shouted at and told to drop one thing for one thing after another until we got it all banged out. My wrists and forearms screamed in pain every day before I got home. I didn’t write at all last week with only those two blog posts being the only words I put together to form sentences and paragraphs.

By Friday I was just a crazy wound up ball of frustration, so I ended up having chocolate pudding and beer for dinner and then handfuls of microwave popcorn, pretzels and tortilla chips on top of a couple of vodka and Coke Zeros. (Yeah, I know. It was a horrible freak show of food, but I wasn’t an idiot, so I’m okay with it.)

Saturday I found out that if I don’t start my day and keep refueling with caffeine at regular intervals I can’t stay awake for more than 2 hours. Since Joe was working on school stuff he didn’t really notice that I wasn’t around and just let me sleep. MS is just a gift that keeps on giving. Sunday was more awake than asleep but I was still really slow and tired.

This is where it gets hard. This morning my alarm went off at training o’clock and I just could not do it. I couldn’t open my eyes, I couldn’t lift myself up, I just could not get out of bed until well after 7:30 AM.

I’m terrified that I am getting sick again. I haven’t started going to bed at 5:30 PM yet so I’m not sure that the fatigue is a new symptom, but it is frustrating as hell not to be able to do what I could do just a week ago.

So this brings me to Chapter 2 (which was supposed to be published on Saturday) and Chapter 3 (which will put me back on schedule).

You’ve Really Got to Want This

and

What Need is Being Served by What You’re Doing Now?

Chapter 2 in a nutshell – Don’t bother setting a goal you aren’t willing to do the hard things for. You will fail. All the good intentions and hopes in the world won’t help you if you don’t really want it enough. If you really want it, you’ll do it through the setbacks and disappointments. That’s where I am at now. Do I really want this enough to do what is hard?

The key to Chapter 3 is coming to realize that what you are doing right now seemed like the solution to a problem but now the solution is a bigger problem than the original. If I don’t understand why I do what I do now, I’m unlikely to be able to change it.

What need is being served by what I am doing now? I have to get clear on that in order to succeed. Confession… I really think I do what I do now because sitting is easier than standing, standing is easier than walking and walking is easier than running. Not sure what need that is filling but I do know that cupcakes will not plug gaping chasm where your soul used to be.