I have a hard time sitting down. Both physically right now because baby girl 4 is seriously taking up a lot of real estate in my body, and mentally – which happens whether I’m pregnant or not. Mentally, when I am at home, it is not an easy thing for me to sit down and be unproductive. Because, when I do, my mind immediately goes into a mini-panic mode, listing out all the things I could be doing with my time besides wasting it.
A lot of people will say the following:
“You need to relax.”
“You need to give yourself some me time and just chill.”
“You are overdoing it.”
But I don’t think my inability to sit down and do nothing is a BAD thing. I feel soooo good when I can look back at my day and see all the things I accomplished. Sure, sometimes it’s a bit overwhelming when I look and see all the things still left to do, but at least I know I was a productive human being that day.
What I do think is a BAD thing is me expecting everyone else to be the same and getting pissed off when they aren’t.
I have been battling this for years. Sometimes it doesn’t bother me as much. But there are days when I start to seethe inside as I run around the house, getting shit done, while the rest of my family is perfectly OK having a lazy day. I can’t understand how people can just lay around, doing absolutely nothing productive with their time. When I ask them, they’ll say, “there’s nothing to do.” I am baffled by this comment. I could list out 5 ways they could be better using their time. How can anyone honestly say there is NOTHING to do?? There are literally loads of better ways to spend your time than watching TV or mindlessly scrolling through social media.
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- Learn a new skill – stop saying you wish you knew how to do something. Teach yourself. YouTube videos aren’t just for entertainment. I taught myself to French braid this way.
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- Clean out something that’s not been touched in a while – a drawer, closet, under your bed, etc. We all have unorganized/nasty places in our house/room.
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- Write down your wish list for your life. Pick 3 things off it make a plan for how you are going to DO them.
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- Do a word puzzle.
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- Pamper yourself – cut your nasty toenails, put a treatment in your hair, whatever.
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- Get ahead – you know your week is busy. Start/finish anything now while you have free time instead of being stressed to get it done during the week.
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- Read a couple chapters in a book.
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- Write down the biggest memories of your childhood. Pick one happy and one sad. Why did these moments make you feel that way? People don’t spend enough time trying to figure out how they became who they are today. This helps.
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- Delete and unsubscribe to crap emails.
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- Take a walk for enjoyment, not exercise.
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- Drive around and take a road you’ve never been down just to see where it goes.
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- Listen to a podcast about improving your life while sunbathing, walking, driving.
Like any of these can be done instead of nothing at all. And usually starting one of these things will lead to another thing. So that your day isn’t wasted doing nothing. You did something with purpose. But the call of nothing might be more rewarding for other people…which I do not understand.
I got angry recently. Let’s blame the preggo hormones on it but to be honest, this lack of go-get usually always bothers me to a degree. Not enough to make me cry and unplug our internet as a result but seeing them do NOTHING always gets under my skin slightly.
Yes, I might be slightly justified by my irritation. It’s not a good thing to be lazy all day. But it’s not like they do that with EVERY second of their free time. Sometimes I guess people need to disconnect and chill out. I’m just not that type of person. I can’t expect everyone to be like me. I shouldn’t get angry when they aren’t.
I think, maybe a happy middle ground would be for me to find a way to lovingly coach my family to find productive things to do instead of huffing and puffing around the house in annoyed judgement? Maybe I give them grace for a couple hours and then say this is no way to spend this day. You’ll never get this day back. Let’s agree on a few things you can do to make this day more productive?
I can’t control them. I can only control me. And I need to stop being passive aggressive about this stuff,
I say all this…. but I know stepping back, being reflective, and not getting pissed will be hard. This post is a bit of therapy to remind myself that I am only in total control of one thing in this life and that is me. I can’t stress when those around me aren’t the same.
However, I will point out that me getting pissed the other day did make Scarlett feel bad for me. She gave me a hug, which made me cry, and she offered to brush my hair out of pity. To which I gladly accepted. I absolutely love having my hair brushed. I have hinted to my girls recently that it would AMAZING to have someone brush their aging, super pregnant, stressed-out mother’s hair, but it took me crying over a bathroom tub for it to finally happen. So, while there are perks to losing my shit apparently, it’s still not a healthy thing for me to keep doing.