Changed

After writing a week ago that I am generally better rested -- with some emotional complications dealing with my mother's dementia -- well, I am super tired today.

It was a combination of things. I got a cold. While I am on the upswing from that, it is not quite in the past. In addition, yesterday I spent some time sheet mulching.

In the best of times that turns me into the wimpiest weakling. Healing from a cold... and I am not even done yet. 

I gave myself permission to not do any more today, not just because of the cold but also because the forecast shows lightning. Who needs that?

(I do appreciate the rain, because thorough watering is important.)

Naturally, I am already behind schedule. Part of that is too many other things to do, but part of it is that it is much harder now to find old newspapers. There has not been a total switch to electronic media, but the change is significant. 

I am worried about how long it will take me to get the other spots laid out, and I am already confident that my initial ambitions will not be met. There will be no strawberries or potatoes this year, and we will still need some mowing. 

It is disappointing, but it is being realistic. I am not capable of doing everything that I want to do. That is true for a single day, and I have made progress by being more realistic about the individual days. There are still some things that have to drop off, even when looking at many days. Some things may fit in later, but some won't.

I can bear that because I have been able to drop (for the most part) the belief that not only should I be able to do everything, but that I must.

That is probably a big part of being able to feel less tired now overall; the responsibilities I took upon myself were ridiculous. That was mainly mental, because I was getting the things done that most needed to be done, but I was still being bugged by everything I could not do.

An accurate understanding of your abilities and what you can even control makes a huge difference.

Getting back to the paper, I mentioned last week that the "I want" and "I need" categories were exactly the same: money, love, and rest.

I am actually in a better place with all three of them, though they remain not completely resolved.

Let me bring up on more category with its entries:

I am ashamed...

• that I am fat.
• that I am poor.

The correlation between being poor and the need for money may be more obvious, but I promise you that I believed being fat had everything to do with not being loved.

I am still fat and still poor. 

Well, "poor" has a lot of nuance there. We could be worse off, I was worse off then, and there are definitely bills that will come due that need money to come in to pay them. I am mostly confident that it will work out, but there is enough uncertainty to keep things interesting. 

There are two things that help with both issues.

One of them is knowing what is not in my control.

It seems that this will require at least one other post.