Yet another fresh start

So, it has been awhile since I’ve been in this space – the past two years have brought a lot of changes to my life. I haven’t taken the time to post for a variety of reasons. The major ones being – trying to deal with the changes in my life and being discouraged by those changes.

When I was last in this space, I had recently lost my father, found out that my daughter was pregnant, started a part-time job and was not happy with my situation. Since that time there have been some other major changes – going through the passing of my father-in-law(which brought up memories of my dad’s passing), the birth of my first grandchild,  changes in my son’s behaviors/attitudes and trying to come to terms with my job situation and the stresses it brought to our marriage and family. There were times when I thought about writing but it never seemed to happen.

Part of the problem was that I never knew where to begin – should I try to catch up on what has been happening or just start fresh. Then I started reading the posts from the beginning and got very discouraged. It seemed like no progress had been made – I keep wanting to start something but the follow through is poor or nonexistent. I know there has been some progress but it feels like I’ve been stuck in the same place, still dissatisfied and yet not doing anything to get myself out of that place.

However, I am at a point where changes need to be made. I’m no longer willing to have my future look like my past. I am committing to do the work. I am committing to getting back on track when things go wrong instead of giving up. I’m not sure what my future will look like but I am committed to working towards a better one.

I am going to be looking very carefully at the things, people and activities in my life to decide if they work for me. I’ve read/heard several times lately an idea that has taken root. It is that you need to get rid of the stuff that doesn’t work for you because it either speaks to the person you think you should be or to the person you think you want to be instead of the person you actually are.

To that end one of my year long goals is to remove at least 300 things/people/activities from my life. The other year long goal is to work on preparing my son for life on his own. He is in high school now and needs to be prepared to head off to college/trade school/work and be able to manage himself and his activities.  Then each month I will have one mini goal as well. For January it is to get back to a good sleep routine. I have let things slide and it isn’t good. I know that being well rested is a keystone habit for me and I need to strengthen my routines and habits in this area.

My action steps for this month are as follows:

1.  Get rid of the stuff that has been gathered and sitting in the house waiting to be dropped off or collected

2.  Commit to getting off the computer by 10 pm and into bed by 10:30 pm -shooting for at least 90% this month

3.  Creating a morning checklist of tasks M needs to do before school and work on him getting them done

Wow, this has turned into quite a long post. I should go back and check for errors but I’m out of time and want to get this posted. Hopefully there aren’t too many mistakes.