Organizing, Moving Forward

The last five years have consisted of mostly small, sometimes medium sized, tweaks in trajectory. They have been exhausting. Our family has grown from a state of unsustainably fucked up -- spiraling out of control -- to extremely bumpy and unpredictable, to very very emotionally unhealthy with no idea how to begin to heal, to the slow beginnings of a healing process, to focused on healing but little else, to just squeaking by, to disconnected but working toward connecting, to sad and angry but loving the heck out of each other in our own admittedly awkward ways, to beginning to look at the financial devastation that the storms wrought on us and realizing we were deeeeeeep underwater, to finding the surface and not seeing a shoreline, to seeing the shore but being simply incapable of moving toward it, to finally moving by inches toward a distant notion of stability,...

I'm not exaggerating in the slightest when I say things have been more challenging than I ever imagined they would be. 

This semester, a brilliant change has finally happened. The wee ones, my baby boys, are no longer "babies," and my oldest three are more than capable of managing a typical, or even a tumultuous night, on their own. This change in the competence and responsibility of the kids has allowed me to go back to my old schedule of working two twelve hour days and one day in my office while they are in school, so I will have a couple of weekdays off from work regularly for the first time in five years. This is significant because before this, I worked all day when they were in school and on the weekends until lunch time, leaving me no time at all when I was neither at work in the classroom or at home tending the tribe. No days for personal catching up or planning. So things repairing a broken wall and painting a room were epic undertakings rather than day projects that could be completed while they were at school. Things like sitting down with my bills and calling creditors to work things out were virtually impossible undertakings of trying to talk over the transition of children coming home from school and needing me for a million things, like signing papers, helping with homework, preparing snacks... so I would have to try to talk to financial folks in the midst of kid chaos or run out of time because banks close by the time life settles down. This problem was exacerbated by my squishy-spined inability to discipline the kids well.

Discipline is another arena in which we have all be growing. Five years ago, when the kids' dad split, our children and I had been living in a culture of fear and shame for nearly a decade. They had grown up in it. Frankly, so had their father and I, so as my therapist says when the waves of guilt start to pull me under, "how could it have been any different" when neither of these children's parents had a model for anything else. So when their dad took off, I let too much slide, became an overly permissive mother who didn't provide enough structure. Books and blogs and friends and doctors have helped firm up my skills there, and I now am capable of doing things like making them clean or complete homework without begging, giving them too much wiggle room, and ultimately giving up and doing the chores myself or letting them slide with unfinished or half-assed homework. I can do that stuff now. I'm even good at it. Now, to be consistent. There is still so much work to be done, but as I see my children responding positively to firm yet loving discipline and more structure (though there are a hell of a lot of growing pains) I am fortified. 

Anyway, these are the things I'm working on (in no particular order):

• a better schedule and more structure around here
• better discipline
• getting out of debt
• restoring my house
• building community with my friends
• writing

That's where my little blog comes in. Now that I will have more of a routine, I plan to update it. I'm not sure if it will be of any interest or benefit to anyone other than me (to organize my life and chart my progress) and it will not attempt to be anything like an "advice" thing. It's more of a place where I can watch changes, and maybe my family that's far away and maybe a handful of my friends who have been amazingly supportive can see positive results. At best, maybe it can be a site where people watch our little tribe grow and get some ideas and some empathy from and for people who are just everyday folks trying to get by in some kind of crazy circumstances. 

I'm thinking that I'll probably update it on Mondays and Fridays, so today is an anomaly. I just had a little time and decided on writing out this little sketch/plan for how I'd like to organize my weeks:

Mondays -- deal with finances, small projects at home, maintain the house.

Tuesdays -- work all darn day

Wednesdays -- work all darn day, catch up at home

Thursdays -- work all darn day

Fridays -- work on writing, trying to produce, organize, and publish work -- go on adventures with the family when they get home from school.

Saturdays -- work in the morning, chill in the afternoon, work on outside of the house stuff OR go on adventures with the family.

Sundays -- work in the morning, fully prep the family for the week, including making sure we are stocked on everything (groceries, school and art supplies, clean clothes...). Sundays will be stage the week days. 

So, stay tuned on Friday for what my family adventure plan is and what kind of writing progress I'm making.