I’m part fish

Hello everyone, I had a great few days off with camping and relaxing.    On the drive there and back I had some wonderful quite time for reflection.  One of my current barriers is feeling like I’m not able to give 100% to anything.  Between working full time, home life, going to school, working out, and eating healthy, I just run out of time and steam.  I get frustrated because I never feel like I have enough time to give things the attention they need and deserve, it makes me feel like a failure.  I realized this weekend that it’s unrealistic to think I can do all of those things perfect all at the same time.  Regardless how hard I try or work at it, there are still only 24 hours a day, if I try to squeeze 36 hours of stuff into them, I’m bound to feel like a failure.  So I need to start prioritizing and finding more balance.

I went to a really neat presentation a few weeks back and feel like there are some fundamental ideas I can apply to this situation.   I hope to sit down with Paul in the next week and define our family values and then look at the things we are doing in life and if they fit into those values.  I also plan to prioritize things going on in my life to better balance them.  Right now, they big question going on for me is how many classes to take this fall.  I’m feeling burnt out of school, I don’t want to take the semester off, but am thinking about just taking one class allowing me more time for family, working out etc.  Education is still part of my values, however, so is family, health etc.  I look forward to finding the right balance for my family and look forward to discovery what Paul and I find together for answers.

I have some great news as well, I got back into the water yesterday.  It’s the first real exercise I’ve had since I injured my foot.  It was WONDERFUL.  It took me a little bit to figure out what strokes and kicks worked best for my foot.   The side stroke is out because of the kick used hurts my foot much, this allows me to focus on my front and back crawl.  I totally rocked it, I swam about ½ mile and enjoyed it more than I ever had before.  I’ve missed working out, I forgot the calmness it bring me.  For some reason, the front crawl suddenly became second nature to me.  I kept saying go slow to go fast, I was so rhythmic it was almost hypnotic.  I think I figured out that I’m part fish.  I remember when I started swimming I could barely swim one length of the pool, what a different place I am today.  My goal is to get 3 more swims in before the YWCA Tri on Aug 14^th.  Tonight or tomorrow I’m going to get back on my bike as well to see how that goes.  I’m only going to go 3 miles, but we’ll see how my foot handles it.  One obstacle at a time J   I’m so glad I’ve got swimming down and am really looking forward to getting back into things even if I’m slow.  I used to dread working out, now I look forward to being able to and feel rewarded when I can.   In some ways, I’m glad for my injury, I have a different perspective now, and I like the view!

Unstoppable “fish fins” Mariah