I can recall a time when I thought I was Superwoman. Well, maybe a more accurate title would be Super-young-twenty-something. It was right after I graduated college and I would say it had a good seven-year run…
I could do it all. I started grad school for guidance counseling and of course I was paying for it on my own, no problem. I had a full time job! I was also working at the college for the head of the department, which was giving me a break on my tuition fee. On top of that, I had a great opportunity at a local elementary school to work with children in “crisis” for a few hours. Did I mention my full-time job was working hands-on with mentally ill adults? Which I loved? Oh yeah, my plate was full. But I loved every minute of it. I’d get home late and work on my schoolwork. Then go to sleep only to get up a few hours later and do it all over again.
On top of this, I was a social butterfly. I was living in Baltimore with a great roommate and we had a wonderful time. I also reunited with my friends from college on a regular basis as well as got together with new friends I had made. None of this fazed me in the least.
Over the years things dropped off one by one. I stopped grad school deciding I didn’t want to be a guidance school counselor any more, which obviously led to me not working for the head of the department. I had also stopped working at the elementary school (that didn’t last long to begin with). I am a work-a-holic and I always kept working, often long, long hours. I eventually changed jobs and to this day I still tend to work many more hours than an 8 hour/day calls for.
I now find myself, at age 32, so far from Superwoman it’s embarrassing. I’m typically so exhausted after working all day (at my own desk, in my own home – tell me how I can be so exhausted from this) that I don’t have the energy to do anything else (and I don’t even have kids!). How do you moms do it? Really? You’re my heroes! You work all day and still deal with the kids, make dinner… I barely find time and energy to take a shower!
As I tell many people, I am the queen of starting things and never finishing them. I am filled to the rim with ideas of things I want to do and feel I should be doing. Things that I believe would make me a better person and make me feel better about myself. I’ve never believed myself to be a lazy person, my whole entire life I’ve thought I’m as far from lazy as you can come. But the past couple of years I’ve found my motivation to be so far off the radar, the radar map isn’t even beeping.
So, hobbies/self-improvements I’ve started and not carried through on:
- Cross-stitch (revisited from childhood, have a half-finished Tinkerbell bookmark)
- Crochet (half-finished winter scarf)
- Scrapbooking (have all the necessary tools and a theme, even the pictures picked out, just haven’t put together)
- Yoga (took 1 ½ classes, bailed on the second class after getting halfway through)
- Meditation (took 1 class, bailed on ¼ of the classes)
- Volunteering (used to volunteer all the time – signed up for websites to keep abreast of volunteer work, haven’t actually done any volunteer work)
- Gym (was going for a few months pretty regularly and enjoyed it, not going to admit to how many months I’ve been paying for a membership now and not going)
- Cooking (had a vision of being the next Julia Child – I admit, that was stretching things – but got a crock pot and was really whipping up some tasty meals – now sits on top of my refrigerator getting dusty)
- Go back to school (keep coming up with excuses why I shouldn’t – money, don’t know what I want to go back to school for)
I need help getting my Superwoman cape back on. There are no valid excuses for my lack of motivation. Absolutely none. How can I accept that I am able to look at the flab hanging from my arm and not do anything about it? Because it’s too hot outside to get in the car and drive to the gym? Unacceptable. That is not the way Superwoman would think. And Superwoman would not eat sandwiches and cereal for dinner because she doesn’t feel like cooking.
Suck it up Shannon! Let Superwoman rise again!
A toned butt would be just luscious…
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