Chaos

I finally went out to lunch with one of my friends.  Ok, she's not just one of my friends, she is one of my best friends.  When we haven't seen each other for awhile I tell myself that we've been SO busy lately.  She reminds me that I usually avoid her when I'm out making a mess of my life.  My default mode is chaos, meaning when I isolate myself and make all my decisions without some outside advice, I start running a hundred miles an hour on the hamster wheel, thinking I'm getting somewhere, when really all I'm doing is stinking up my cage. 

It's probably not unlike my old alcoholic thoughts when I say, "I'm not doing too much.  I have a plan.  I'm handling my schedule ok!"  Then I look at what I'm doing.  I'm taking four college classes.  I work about twenty-five hours a week at my two part time jobs, one of which keeps me up until 4 a.m. most mornings.  I take a lot of ibuprofin now because loading 1,000 boxes every night takes a toll, so the little bit of sleep I get isn't really great.  Oh ya, I'm also finishing up my book, which I try to squeeze in between homework and tests and laundry and dishes.  And I still have three kids who have places to go and lucky me, they like spending time with me too.  Fantasy football wouldn't take a lot of my time except I CAN'T LOSE!  So I spend a lot of computer time looking for the next sleeper who is going to take me to the superbowl.  I started seeing Heidi Salonek, chiropractor for my neck and back.  Jenna has guitar lessons.  Johnny has football practice and games and Andy is doing Improv every Sunday.

Since I can't completely quit doing activities like I quit drinking, I need to keep in contact with my friends so I can get some feedback and they can point out the red flags that I don't see or choose to ignore.  I am going to start an internship in January and I still have two more classes to take, so even though my life is a little crazy, I have opportunities right now to get feedback so I can attempt to balance my schedule a bit.  I have some work options coming up.  At UPS, there is a lot of overtime available from Thanksgiving until Christmas with all the holiday packages moving through.  I've thought about being a driver's helper.  I would go out with a driver every day on their eight hour route, come home and sleep for 3 or 4 hours, then head to my regular job which goes from 10:30 - 3 or 4:00 a.m. or however long it takes.  It seems pretty crazy, so I should probably run this little idea by someone... maybe.  :)