Hi, my name is Natalie, and I’m a horrific procrastinator.
Also, I have problems self-motivating (don’t tell my resume that, it’ll have an identity crisis).
I have owned a shiny new gym membership for the past 30 days and have yet to set foot inside said gym, nor have I managed to return to the studio for classes since Halloween. I owe my grandparents Thank You cards from Christmas and, yes, I still owe some people wedding and baby-birthday Thank You cards as well. There’s a stack of laundry that’s mostly clean on the chair in our room, and I’m pretty sure Bryce’s room has two hampers in it – one that’s clean and one that’s not. I have an entire empty wall of massive emptiness that I swore I was going to paint something for about three months ago…and speaking of paintings! There’s one that I gridded and prepped and got no further on…roughly six months ago.
I think there’s a baby running around here who probably could do with feeding, I guess. (kidding)
Actually, the kid thing I’m pretty ok at.
The rest of it…
I start with the best of intentions. Brian and I had planned a New Years plan (because I hate the word “resolution” almost as much as I hate the word “alliance”) of sorts. We were beginning “Project Awesome” – a two sided quest to both be healthy physically, and perhaps physically ridiculously good looking. Hahaha, that sounds awful.
Some context may help matters. We both (me) would love to be a bit healthier when it comes to what we eat and drink. So far, he’s gone 10 days without soda and french fries. That’s a huge start! Me, well, I’m…I dunno. I’ve broken my habit of having a beer or two at work after every shift, and that has to count for something. I could do better. The physical side of things…I feel like there’s no tactful way of saying things that relate to size and body shape and all that. Both of us maintain a reasonable shape with minimal effort (by “effort”, I mean exercise. I ABSOLUTELY have to put effort into watching what I consume). When we DO put in effort, we tend to get results quite quickly. At the end of last year, we were joking around and I quite seriously presented the notion of a “what would happen if we actually tried?” sort of fitness quest. I’m honestly curious what would happen if we consistently hit the gym, and worked out there too!
I figure now is a good starting point. He’s the weight he likes to be (180 at 6’1″), all but being less ten pounds of muscle or so. I’m the size I was at my smallest in 2006/2007, which is about where I’d like to be with about ten pounds max to lose, and no I’m not sharing my weight – for some, including myself, reading what women weigh and what they consume is a nauseating trigger. The point of this is, we’re at a good baseline. And still…
The motivation is crap.
And that Thank You card thing…I’ll be honest, I panic when I think about them. I did back then, I do now. I’m quite aware that it’s a horrific faux pas to have let this much time pass. The reasons as to why (besides the crap procrastinator I happen to be at times) are probably more personal that I’d go in to here, and however legitimate they may be it doesn’t excuse it. Nor does it reflect my gratefulness. I’ve valued every single thing we have been gifted, whether it be wedding related or Bryce related, and yet that gratitude still can’t motivate me to write a card. Or 27.
I hate this, to be honest. I hate this inability to complete things that other people seem to manage just fine. Between the baby and work and husband, I tend to have a fully occupied mind that can’t juggle much more than the day-to-day, and sometimes even THAT is pushing it (read: laundry, etc.). The moms that manage multiple children, work, cooking, cleaning, husbandry of husbands, and maintain a social life in addition to all that – I’m pretty sure you’ll all either gifted with some sort of genetic code I wasn’t or you’re all massively medicated. Or both. Or neither, and I’m being a jerk.
Perhaps I was gifted with the mental capacity to juggle a dozen trains of thought at a time, but I sure didn’t get the synapses to activate the physical manifestation of such intended effort. Anyone else identify? Obviously, I don’t fall on the far end of the spectrum where I can accomplish nothing. I do know that there’ve been times in my life where this wasn’t so bad. But, I also don’t fall on the end of the spectrum that some would label “accomplished”.
Is there a prescription for that?
I hear coke’s great for this sort of thing, but I’m not willing to go there just yet.
I’d just like to know how most people go from thought or intention into action with relative seamlessness, because I could sure use a lesson or two or four.
