See...I can learn

After my epiphany the other night I've spent the past few nights really doing some thinking.

I've been living this crazy active super busy lifestyle since I was sixteen. I've never known anything else. I realized that I don't want to be super busy any longer. But...here's the kicker. If I'm not constantly busy, doing things, I feel worthless. My busy schedule is how I gauge my self-worth. I know, I'm clearly insane. Then I spent some time trying to figure out how to reprioritize my life. Here's where I am -

My relationship with God

My Family

My Training

My Job (yes, it's number four - it pays for the training)

School

Everything else

Here's how my life was being lived:

Work

School

Family

Training

My relationship with God

See a problem?

Here's what I'm doing:

My relationship with God - I do need to go to church more, but more importantly than that I need to take more time to develop a personal relationship. I need to read the Bible more and spend some quiet time in prayer.

My family - Sunday is supposed to be family day (well, except for Super Bowl, because the kids aren't into football) but lately I spend Sunday trying to catch up on everything I didn't have time to do during the week, including homework. So, Sunday is back to family day (except every other Sunday morning I do spar), don't judge.

Training - Even my trainer said today, I was happiest when I was training hard core. I miss it so so I went back at it full strength today. My trainer wants to put me on the list for our fight night in April, not sure I'll be ready though. Either way it feels good to be back. Besides I'm up 15 lbs since my surgery and I can't have that.

Work - Yeah, work is important. It pays for the training and the things I do with my family. And...it gives me self-worth, yeah I know I need to work on that.

School - Yes it's so important I finish. But taking ten units while working full time is just, well, stupid. So, I dropped the statistics class this semester and I'm at a happy six units. So, it might take me a little longer, but I'll get there. I'm still taking off a bit early two days a week so I can come home and do some homework.

When I made these decisions a couple of things happened. First, my stress level went down SIGNIFICANTLY. I've slept more this week than I have since I don't know when. Second, I immediately started to think about what I could get done with this new free time. Then I had to slap myself.

The hard part is trying to figure out where I learned that my self worth is defined by how hard I push myself to accomplish the impossible.

My therapist is going to work with me on this, but she's proud I've discovered all of this by myself.

E=mc who cares

It's not that I don't like school, because I do. I love school. I do hate that I've never finished college. I mean I REALLY hate it. It makes me feel really stupid.
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When I decided to go back to school a couple of years ago carrying 10-12 units wasn't that big of a deal because I was only working 24 hours a week. But then a year ago everything went down at my office and I went from a 24 hour a week medical biller to a 50- 60 hour a week office manager for a six physician practice.

So this semester I decided to go back. I'm carrying ten units, although one of my classes doesn't start until March. Last week because I got sick as all heck I missed a week of my statistics class and I'm so behind it hurts. A week of statistics is like seven human years, or something like that.

And I'm tired. This is an example of what Tuesdays are like for me. I'm at work by 7:15, work until 3, drive to school. Have class until 6pm. Drive back to Long Beach. Pic up Beav, come home, eat dinner, do homework. Thursday is the same except I drive to Long Beach and go to the dojo and take the 6:30 class.

And that's another thing. It really cuts into my training time and I miss training.

It sounds like I'm whining, doesn't it? Well I'm just trying to talk myself out of feeling like a loser if I drop the statistics class. The truth is though I have to have this class so I still have to take it. I'm just frustrated knowing that it's taking forever to get this done.

But is the important thing...isn't that I'm trying to get it done?

Truth is, I'm 41 and I work really hard. I don't want to spend my entire weekends doing homework. Not when I have a family here that I want to spend time with.

Yep, I'm totally rationalizing.

And I still feel like a loser.

Thursday Ten

I've done Thursday Ten before which I copied from Sarah, who is a cool chick and said it was ok. Thought I would try it again.


1. Wow this post got me four comments, woohoo! That's a lot for me. Nice to know what I said actually touched a cord with some people. I will have to post more on that subject and how messed up I am in my relationship with God.


2. My children are expensive. This week alone I have paid for - $300 registration fee for Einstein at NAU, $220 flight to Flagstaff to visit NAU, $953 - PARTIAL PAYMENT for Beav's eighth grade trip to DC, $100 deposit for Einstein's class ring, announcements, cap/gown.


3. I am thankful that I can afford to do the things above. Truly thankful. My parent's didn't even encourage me to go to college and I'm so unbelievably proud of Einstein. And I've never been to DC or New York and both my kids will have been there.


4. My ex husband is meeting me in Arizona and we're driving together to Flagstaff to visit the school and attend orientation. It's cool that we can do things like that. A little weird, but cool. I know a lot of divorced couples who could never handle it. His dad really, I think, wanted him to attend school in state but I think Einstein is ready to get a little distance from home.


5. I'm a total type A personality. Lists for everything, everything has a place....yet Beav is a complete and total slob. I don't know what to do. I've tried everything. He just can't keep his things together or tidy. I'm torn between just accepting that is who he is and determined to get him to clean up a bit.


6. I have not worked out all week because of this STUPID cold. Spoke to my trainer yesterday, well tried to anyway with a very squeaky voice. He kept telling me that my phone was cutting out, "that's not my phone, that's my voice." He then told me to stay away from the dojo until I was better. That place, when it gets all steamy and sweaty inside, is like a bathhouse for germs. If nothing I'll be there tomorrow for my private. He's good at creating workouts around whatever is going on with me.


7. I'm happy to be back in school, however, not happy I have a statistics quiz today. That stuff is hard, especially right now because it's all about definitions and terms and I have this stupid cold and my head hurts all the time. Our teacher is swedish, I think, and half of what she says is difficult to understand. Half the time I look around at the younger students and think to myself "did she really wear that to school/when did I turn into my mother?" One day last week over half the class were wearing flannel shirts. Talk about a trend.

8. I have no plans for the weekend ahead. Woohoo. Was thinking of buying tickets for the rodeo but with hubby feeling sick not sure he'll be up to it. Bull riding is not one of my favorite rodeo sports, I prefer bronco busting, but I'll take what I can get.

9. Speaking of hubby being sick, I'm a total loser. I was really out of it for two days, hubby had to do pretty much everything. Now that he is sick I totally lack empathy. It's something I seriously need to change about myself. I have no patience for illness. His cold has turbo-charged his snoring so the lack of sleep for the past two nights isn't helping me at all. I need to pray for patience.

10. Looked through some of my past posts and wow have some things seriously changed in my life and I have to say, mostly for the good. Yay me! I also need to clean up my layout. I'm totally not a mommy blogger..some of those gals are kinda mean to each other. I'm happy over here in my little blog world with my four commenters.

Have a great day.

Felt so much better after my last post.

Now if I could just rid myself of this head cold. It's seriously kicking my ass. Missed kickboxing and sparring this morning because the thought of getting hit in my head just was too much. Since right now it feels THIS BIG.

Besides, I miss sparring.....believe it or not. My trainer doesn't believe it because I haven't had time to drag my sorry ass in on Saturday morning. If I can manage to breathe through my nose tomorrow morning I plan to be there.

Another reason I need to go is that old saying "feed a cold...." because I appear to have taken that quite literally. Seriously, I can't get enough to eat. It's the oddest thing. On the plus side my shoulder is coming along nicely. It's still sore and hurts but more often when I don't work out which is a good sign.

Thanks to feeling so miserable I haven't gotten anything done today that I planned to do. But, tonight is our girlfriend dinner and I"ll be damned if I miss that. Sis-in-law is headed here at four so we can go over together so I have until then to feel halfway normal.

Tomorrow the family is hoping to see Sherlock Holmes as long as I don't sneeze my way through the movie.

Coming out of the closet or why you should unfollow me

Pat Robertson is an idiot. That being said and out of the way there are some other things I have to get off my chest.

Ever since the aforementioned idiot once again opened his mouth I've seen all kinds of verbal/twitter attacks against Christians as a whole. And I don't understand why this is ok. This morning someone I follow/followED on twitter went as far as to say right-wingers/conservatives, etc hated colored people..yada yada yada you get the idea.

I grew up in church and then I quit going for a very long time. I realized that I only went because it was habit. Because that's what my parents did. I quit because I realized I wasn't going because I had any kind of real relationship with Christ. Over the past few years that's been changing.

I am a Christian. The born again kind. I'm not the best Christian I can be. I make a lot of mistakes and I'm finding my way down this road. I don't consider myself religious or part of a religion although I do go to a Baptist church. I consider myself a Christian. I accept the Bible as truth, I've accepted Christ as my saviour, I'm a sinner.

I'm also NOT a registered republican. I don't stand outside abortion clinics with pictures of unborn babies. Personally I feel that if you're standing outside an abortion clinic protesting you better be part of the solution. You better have adopted or fostered an unwanted child. You better be supporting an orphanage. You better be doing something to help solve the problem other than standing on a sidewalk and yelling at people

I pretty much feel that way about all kinds of, what I'll refer to as social causes. I attend a church that invests a lot of time and money in local organizations catering to homeless people and foster children. The woman that leads the charge with foster children adopted five of them. Those are the people I prefer to know. People who are part of the solution. My brother, a missionary, is currently organizing a trip to Haiti. He has a heart for Uganda and has been there already. He is part of the solution.

In the past few months I've been slowly awakening to what is required to call myself a Christian. I've been keeping it to myself because and I'm so ashamed to admit this, what if I twitter or facebook about my relationship with Christ and people don't want to be my friend?

I am ashamed. Because seriously, if you can't look past a label and see who I am as a person why would I want you to be my friend? Because I'm a pretty cool chick. I've done some bad things. I've done things I'm ashamed of. And I do a lot of good things and I'm hoping that I do more good in the future and less of the things I'm ashamed of.

So for the record here it is. I am a Christian. I don't hate gays, I don't hate minorities, I'm pro-choice and every once in a while I like a good cigar. I like to read the Bible and I accept it as truth. I have piercings and tattoos. I swear, but I am trying to stop.

But most importantly I try to part of the solution. Soapboxes are easy to stand on working towards a solution is a lot more difficult.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot....I married a right-wing, conservative, Republican. For the record he also doesn't hate gays, minorities, he's pro-choice, but he hates cigars :)

Why I'm a twit

Dear faithful readers (all three of you). I've just taken my antibiotics for a wonderful ear infection that I've had the luck to come down with the same week I start back at school. Because I obviously don't have enough to worry about.

I should be in bed....and that is my next stop but this post has been sitting in my head for a few days so time to get it out.

I've been on twitter for well over a year now. I thoroughly enjoy it and tweet often. I keep my tweets locked and I find that the same people keep asking permission to follow me...and it got me to thinking about why they want to follow me.

I understand that a lot of people tweet for marketing purposes, to help grow their businesses, etc. I don't. I tweet because I enjoy the people I "meet" via twitter. A lot of the people I follow on twitter also blog and their blogs are on my reader page. Twitter brings me into contact with a lot of people that, in all honesty, in real life I might not be friends with. People who think completely different than I do...people who really add to my life by sharing their insights on different subjects. Simply put I love twitter because I love meeting new people.

That being said, I do follow some people based purely on hobbies or things I enjoy doing. I follow a lot of people on twitter because of their association with wine or wineries. The majority of these individuals I never have discussions with but I find their tweets useful.

When someone does reply to me on twitter I often make the effort to reply back. Although sometimes there just isn't anything I can add to the conversation. There are many times though that I've replied to others and have NEVER received a response. Those are the people I drop because a)they're not interested in twitter relationships; b)they don't follow me; or c)they follow just way too many people.

I also admit that there are times, and there have been many, when my fellow tweeters have really helped me through rough spots. The online twitter friendships I have made because of common issues of grief have been godsends to me on really rough days.

I'm really not sure what the point of this post is but I just felt I needed to say it. For me twitter and/or F@cebook isn't a popularity contest. Instead it's just a great way for me to socialize with other people. And if you're one of them I thank you.

My Plans for 2010

Even though I don't do resolutions there are a number of things that I would like to accomplish this year. Here's my list so far:


1. Read The Purpose Driven Life which has been sitting next to my bed for a year!


2. Finish all the classes I need to transfer to four year.


3. Apply to four year university (and hopefully get accepted)


4. Spend a weekend away with my husband at least once every four months.

5. Become a certified coder.


6. Join the Kiwanis. I've aged out of the overachievers and I miss community service.

7. Take cooking classes....I just want to be better.

8. Go with Einstein to an out of state Nascar race (preferably Talladega or Daytona).