Keepin’ on keepin’ on

Well, I’ve managed to keep up with the new schedule for a few weeks now, and so far, I haven’t collapsed in a heap. This is a bit of a surprise, to be honest.

Once the initial backlog of housework was cleared, the daily indoor chore load lightened substantially, so that’s helped. Keeping up with things is much easier than dealing with a built up mess in intermittent spurts, something that we probably all know intellectually but don’t necessarily find inspiring enough to keep us doing the boring day to day stuff necessary to prevent the build up of the mess. I’ve been using the Reminders app on my iPhone to schedule the tasks on a recurring basis: there’s a task list for every day of the week, and they repeat weekly so my to-do list shows up automatically. Anything I don’t check off as ‘done’ will stay on the list until I dismiss it, too, so if I put something off for a day, I don’t forget about it completely. It’s handy, and because I always have my phone with me, it’s very convenient.

We got the tree taken down and all the Christmas stuff put away (The Reluctant Farmer and The Boy helped with that) and I was able to get all the pine needles swept up and the backlog of floor washing and so forth cleared in one day of hard work. A few days later, a three year old steer and a one and a half year old heifer were finally loaded into the trailer and taken off to the Big Pasture in the Sky, so we have fewer outside chores now as well – less hay and water are needed with those two gone, and in a couple of weeks we’ll have fresh beef in the freezer and available for sale, so yay for that!

My homeschooling adventure with the new equipment is proceeding nicely … I have often said that if you can read you can learn to do anything, because there are instructions written for pretty much anything you want to do. I once read an explanation online for how to unclog a badly plugged toilet, then went to the hardware store and bought what I needed and managed to clear the drains all by myself (yes, I was very proud of myself, and I still am). I’ve been reading and experimenting with the new gear, and have just ordered a bunch of books from the library. So far, things look promising in terms of me being able to accomplish what I intend … whether or not it can succeed as a business venture remains to be seen.

Today, though, I am tired and short of breath (no, it’s not physical, it’s just another of my psychosomatic symptoms, honest). I’ve spent most of the day, between chores and the bit of housework on todays’ list, in the rocking chair knitting a sweater, a commission job for a friend of mine. It is a glorious shade of violet and is turning out to be very pretty. I quit this evening when I got to the next section of cables … my brain power is not up to complicated cabling just now.

It’s odd how as the fury of my mental health flu episode ebbs away, my energy goes with it. I’ve run my whole life on the fumes of anger, self-hatred and frustration for years, I think. When I get really mad at myself, I can get all sorts of stuff accomplished … of course I’m beating myself up the whole time and I’m living in a horribly sad and lonely dark place while I’m at it, but hey, I get a lot done. When the anger finally drains off, though, I’m left exhausted and out of strength. So I just sit … which, after awhile, makes me mad at myself for doing so little and I start the cycle again, fuelled by a fresh burst of self-deprecation for being a lazy, no-good, unproductive lump.

This is no way to live.

There has to be a positive source for the energy to be productive and get through the days, and I need to find it. I don’t want to be addicted to anger anymore.