Life, Expectations and Responsibility...

I know it's been a while since my last post...  Once I started to realize that people were actually reading this, I got a little worried.  What if my writing was boring or nobody wanted to read it any more?  What if I offended someone?   What if I mis-spell something or miss a comma?

Then there was the recent Seattle shooting where 5 were killed.  Since that day, I've probably had twice as many nightmares and moments of panic.  In this shooting, an angry man who had been apparently shunned/kicked out of a cafe came in and shot 5 people (one survived), then drove downtown, and pulled another random woman out of her car and killed her.  This could happen ANYWHERE!  Urgg, I hate being reminded of the terror caused by random senseless acts of violence.  It happens in the city and the country.  There is no way to really prevent a violent person from buying a gun, and you can't legislate against that unless the person in question has committed a felony.  Changing the gun laws won't stop these random killings.  It 'might' help prevent some crimes, but I suspect that a violent person will be violent whether or not they have a gun.  Sorry for the rant--just needed to make that clear!

Then, as icing on the cake, my sweet sweet grandma passed away.  It was her time, and she was ready to go.  No need to be sad about that--but its still bittersweet when I think about how I wish I had called her more.

So, anyways, I've been getting less sleep, which makes me cranky, and much less in the mood for writing.... or reading... or just about anything other than just being pitiful and sad.

I've talked about my patterns of behavior in the past--getting excited about doing something, starting to do it and realizing that its more work than I can do, and then giving up on everything....

Step 1 of the cycle of doom

Step 2--the beginning of the end

Step 3--total exhaustion and loss of will-power

So, how do I break this cycle?  It's important for me to set some limits on what I do and do not do during the day.

I need to:

-say NO much more often
-reserve most of my fairly limited energy for things that I 'want' to do (otherwise I just end up resenting the            fact that I waste all of my energy on un-fun things)
-not give up too easily on something that truly interests me
-remember that it's ok to take time for myself each day

This will hopefully keep my to-do list fairly short and interspersed with fun things.  I also need to not give up! I just read a really interesting article about how failure and character development are more important than IQ when it comes to success.  It is important to realize that good things sometimes take hard work to achieve.  I want to work harder, but ONLY on things that truly interest me.  There is absolutely no reason to waste my limited energy on anything else!