sigelphoenix

Attempting to recover at home. It helps a lot that both of my boys are here (ratzeo doesn't need to be on campus today, and Kershach is ... well, doing his kitty thing and chilling out near me).

I've been thinking a lot about my New Year's goals - namely, how I haven't been fulfilling them. I've done some things, like writing bits of fic, but I've fallen behind on my reading goal and I haven't even touched my sketchbook. I'm still falling into the pattern of: go to work, go to gym (on certain days), come home, feel too tired to do anything productive until it's time to go to sleep. And then do it all over again.

There have been some improvements: primarily, I'm not stressing as much about work. I have let myself worry - because I can't not worry about things, and not letting myself do so would just stress me out more - but I've been improving my ability to do so proportionally. How long do I think about the stress? How large do I let it loom in my thought process? How much fear do I feel about the possibility of failure? How likely is that failure, really? And what alternatives are there even if the failure occurs? How much do I express my stress to others, or let it affect my interactions with others? etc. There are a lot of areas I can exert control over, and I am in the (neverending) process of bringing those areas under my control.

Of course, I have to be honest and acknowledge that one of the reasons I am doing well is that the high-stress period of my job is over. It's definitely easier to manage stress when I can say to myself, "That was the hardest part, and I already did it." This isn't ideal - I should be able to manage my worries even without having the payoff of "I did it and didn't die" giving me a boost. I need to be able to manage my stress even when I still have the potential failure/catastrophe/whatever still looming over my head.

Anyway. Besides that area, I do need to work on how to make better use of my time. I don't have a lot of hours between getting home in the evening and my bedtime, but there are enough to get things done, especially if I work little-by-little on a daily basis.

I don't want to let days, months, 2009 pass by in a blur. I want to engage in productive and fulfilling activities, even if I don't manage to do so every single day. I'm not sure, at this point, how to do it. (Of course, my brain is fuzzy with teh sick, so that might have something to do with it.)

So my goal for the week is a meta-goal: figure out how to make goals so that I can spend my time in the ways I really want to. I'm going to think about what kinds of goals to make, and how often, and how to reinforce them. That should give me a good start, at least.