It is very timely that today’s topic, which I planned out a couple weeks ago, is on Overcoming Barriers because this past week has been a huge exercise in that for me. So much so that I missed a blog post last week, keeping up on a course I’m taking, and several things I had planned to do over the weekend. Let’s dive into that a little more.
What I Thought Was Going to Happen: When last week started, I knew that I had some additions to make to dance costumes for a small group my daughter was in. I knew that she had an appointment to go to on Tuesday. I knew that I needed to be at the dance studio to help with some costume accessories on Wednesday night, had some cleaning things I wanted to get done Friday and Saturday, some errands to run, and to help my daughter get ready for a full day of competition dress rehearsal on Sunday. While she was at the dress rehearsal, I could do some more work at home and be up there for the large dance number that I help with. It was All Planned Out.
What Actually Did Happen: I started making the costume additions, but not as much as I wanted to on Monday and Tuesday evenings due to being busy with other tasks and running my kid around to dance class. I helped with the costume accessories Wednesday evening and discovered that a new costume my daughter’s group got in that night was going to need modifications for modesty purposes. After consultation with the studio owner, we decided on a plan, and I took ownership of getting it done. Enter Anxiety. Big Anxiety. I had already been feeling keyed-up for a couple weeks from several things, and all of this kind of pushed me over The Edge. By Thursday, I was in a full-blown functional panic attack and was not very useful at work or anything else. I was jittery, exhausted, heart palpitating, not to mention legs aching when I tried to sleep. Over-all becoming a hotter and hotter mess. The thing was, though, that I knew this was all happening. I knew what is was and why, and yet I struggled to get my brain under control. Anxiety is a bitch.
I finished the additions for the first set of costumes and got those distributed Thursday night. Getting that done relieved a lot of the anxiety, and I was able to sleep better that night. Friday is when things really went in a different direction. While the story involves getting fabric, figuring out what to do and how to do it, running errands including taking my daughter to the mall and dance store, I ended up with 8 girls’ costumes that I started working on Saturday afternoon. I sewed for the rest of the day except for an hour or two when we grabbed some dinner.
My daughter had to be at the studio by 6:45 on Sunday morning. I set up a sewing area in the studio and kept working. One part of what I was doing involved having to pin a piece of mesh to the back 3 straps of the costume and had to be fit to each girl individually and then hand-sewn on. This took a while. More of a while than I had anticipated. As the day went on, I realized that I was not going to get all of these done. At that point, I decided to finish what I already had pinned and try to get the rest pinned at the end of the night to take home to work on this week. I had thought I would have a chance to run home during the day and do some meal planning, organizing for the week, and a few weekly cleaning chores. This did not happen.
When I left the studio at 9:30pm, after a 15 hour day, with a tired, sore, hungry, and cranky teenager who peeled her fake eyelashes off as soon as she stepped out of her last dance, I felt defeated, behind, and yet was too tired to have anxiety about it. Nothing had gotten done.
How I Dealt With It: For starters, I went to work today even though I didn’t want to. I brought my planner stickers along and did some planning for the week for both work and home. I figured out some meals for the week along with a grocery list that I can get tonight. I looked at the cleaning tasks and other projects I didn’t get done and re-assigned them to next weekend. I readjusted the plan for working on my goals. This realignment actually started Sunday afternoon when I realized that 1) I wasn’t going to get these costumes done, 2) I wasn’t going to be able to get home for any significant amount of time, and 3) I was going to need to adjust my normal daily stuff for this week to accommodate finishing the costumes and stay on track with some other monthly goals.
What I Did Not Do: Panic. Get mad. Get depressed. Freak out. Blame others. Blame myself. Yell at my husband who said, “Why were you gone so long? Don’t you think 15 hours is a little much? What were you doing for 15 hours? What was Mackenzie doing for 15 hours? Did they make everyone stay for 15 hours?” (I should probably get some kind of award for not loosing my shit on that one.) While I can totally see myself doing all of those things, I knew that they wouldn’t help the situation. I knew that taking out my exhaustion and frustration on someone else or myself was going to elevate my feelings of not being as productive as I wanted to be which would just make me feel bad.
The Moral of the Story: Barriers and set-backs are going to happen. How you respond to them is important. You can throw a hissy fit and feel defeated, or you can find a way to work around what has happened and keep going in the direction you were going in.
- You will need to figure it out.
- You will adjust your plan for working on your goals and tasks.
- You will plan out your next course of action and reassign things you didn’t get done to places where you can get it done.
You may also need to re-assign and adjust your feelings around the set-back from frustration to acceptance and determination to keep you from staying in that place of annoyance and panic and keep you moving forward. And that, my friends, is the key to staying the course.
You can do it. I believe in you.
Peace from The Edge,
Julia
