One of the things I do often is self assess myself. I suppose its one of the perks of being a narcissist. We do tend to self-focus A LOT! Some use it for good and some for evil. Me, I try to gauge whether I’ve been keeping myself… well… even.
See I often swing between focusing too much on ONE thing and spreading my focus too thinly on MANY things. Confusing? Let me elaborate.
When I woke up from the haze of 10 years of focused parenting & running a business, I realized I’d completely neglected a large part of myself. Where was MY happiness? Not to mention.. where was my figure!! Haha! Naturally I did a bit of introspection and tried a few new things. Joined a gym, tried my hand at writing, remembered what make-up was and spruced up my wardrobe with a new piece of clothing here and there. In other words, I let myself indulge a little into MY happiness.
The amusing part was as it progressed, my own happiness trickled down a bit to the family. But also anything that took me away from the pursuit of my happiness tended to irritate me…. also trickling down to the family. Work didn’t progress as much as it could have as I felt distracted by what MY happiness wanted to do instead (write). And homeschooling the oldest & dealing with his difficulties, along with the other two sometimes was extremely challenging and frustrating during that time.
As the marriage disintegrated because I realized MY happiness wasn’t going to be fully realized with a husband who couldn’t grow with me, (Although the REAL tipping point was knowing I no longer respected the man I’d married.) the idea of being single became this HUGE focus that My Happiness latched on. And I threw myself into it.
And, oh my, was I happy. It was a little like shedding a heavy coat I’d been wearing because I HAD to.. but now the weather was warm & breezy and shorts, heeled sandals and a sexy tank top was under the coat. And I fairly danced in the freedom of losing that heavy thing I’d worn for so long over this preferred outfit.
And every day which I marched toward single I got happier.
I will admit I didn’t put in as many work hours as I could or should have. (I was meeting 4 men a week for lunch.) I admit I stopped working very much on my writing. (Of course the blog was substituting nicely for my need to express myself.) My family life barely changed beyond the fact Mommy wore completely different outfits now! lol I was still a good mother to the boys. I still cooked dinner & breakfast, did their laundry, supervised homework & chores and gave out tons of cuddles, tickles & laughing time.
And I did it with more happiness. Because I had this goal in my head of Being Single!
And then I achieved it. And ALL the responsibilities came back. Bit by bit the old, heavy coat found its way back around me. Granted it was shorter and sleeveless (after all, I did lose 200 lbs of responsibility… at least I THINK that’s what that man weighted!) but it was still a bit shapeless and it made walking in heels difficult. But I was getting ahead at work. I’d done a bit of outlining a few books I’d like to find the time to write. And the kids were growing into pretty responsible young men. Oh and my libido was more than happy with Sex God in my life.
The other day I realized I was pretty content. I also realized that I wasn’t excited about anything. My “passion” had dwindled. Buried in the mundane of every day living. Contentment is nice, it means your life is working. But it also means you’re done striving for anything. The highlight of my day seems to be getting ahead of the data entry in front of the television in the evenings.
I’ve written about this before. Getting so wrapped up in keeping ALL the many plates/projects/things we do spinning along that we start to neglect one important part. Us. Don’t get me wrong… keeping up is necessary and if we do it right it keeps us sane. But I look back on some of my moments of excitement and MY Happiness in the past two years and ask myself where did it go?
Then I remind myself that its been 6 months since Coachella and I’ve got another 6 months to go before next years, where Sex God and I (and hopefully several others heeheehee) can toss aside that heavy coat of responsibility and respectability and spend 3-4 days indulging in nothing but OUR Happiness.
In the meantime… well, I need to seduce someone!