Sleep? We don't need your stinking sleep!

Let me preface this to say that I love our newest little addition... very much.

But there's a reason God made him cute.

I haven't gotten a decent night's sleep since he's come to stay with us.  I'm sleeping in intervals again, and it's really ticking me off.  Lack of sleep tends to make me testy.

Not to mention it zaps my energy and slows down the weight loss process completely.

I have no clue what to do.  I've tried to flip the schedule over but I'm just so drained.  If I sleep at night I barely get 6 hours of sleep in, and if I take a nap during the day it leaves me feeling horrid.  Today I woke up at 4am.

Actually... that's not true.  I woke up at 12am.  1am.  2am.  Then finally got out of bed at 4am.

Is it possible that I'm just not meant to sleep at night?

And if that's true, how am I supposed to get anything done during the day?  Without a doubt I am most productive when I get up in the morning.

What would be nice is to get up around 10am and no later.  It's still early enough to get things done but gives me a little sleeping in time.  The problem with this is Steven's early morning schedule.  None of the rest of my family are morning people either, and I feel like I need to get them up and off in the morning.

Of course, that's just something I've taken on myself.  They could get up and off on their own.  Maybe I should just get over myself and let them be big boys.  Because I need to find something that works in order to drastically change my life.

And let's face it... I'm not an "up with the roosters" farm type girl.

It's kind of interesting that I have spent so much time lately evaluating my life.  I guess I've grown enough to know that in order to make these life long changes I need to find something I can stick with.  Doing something justbecause I feel like I need to do it that way never works for me.

The good news is I have a job that allows me to carve out my own schedule.  I have the luxury of finding a pattern that fits me, rather than fitting my life to it.  This is a privilege and I should treat it properly.

There's that word again... should.  I was just about to change it but the only other word that fit was "need".  I think it's high time I get rid of the shoulds and needs.  I spend entirely too much time waffling with intention.  What I really "need" or "should" do is just do what needs to be done.  The more I think about it, the less likely I am to do it.

It all comes back to Yoda.  There is no try.  There is do or do not. 

It's so weird how the mind affects things, isn't it?  Get this.  Yesterday a writer friend of mine calls Steven on his cell phone and says that he has a producer friend who is looking for a vampire script.

What luck.  *I* have a vampire script.

Steven's over the moon, thinking that so many things have turned a corner for us recently (and they have), that this is just kismet.

Meanwhile I'm locked up on finishing the page one rewrite of said vampire script necessitated by the novelization I wrote. 

It's like in my mind I really cannot fathom what it would be like to be a successful writer.  Someone who actually SELLS what she writes.

The same is true for weight loss.  If I see a normal weight woman I really cannot picture myself in her place.  I cannot *see* myself thin.

I need to get to the root of that.

ERRRRRRRRRRG. 

There's thatbastard child of procrastination again... intention.

Can you tell I'm just making things up as I go?  This is a fly by the seat of your pants entry.  This is not a well crafted entry in the least.  It's just me rambling on.  I blame the sleeplessness. 

Okay, so let's look at this for a moment and see if I can't find the root of my problem.

I have a problem seeing myself having  good life.   Like I said Steven just got a new job and I really feel like we have turned a corner, but in my heart I'm just sick with anxiety that it won't work out.

It's not that I have bad luck, which is what I always used to think - I'm not cursed.  But like Dr. Phil says we create our own reality.

So what do I get by living an inferior life?

The short answer is that I'm not responsible for much.  I can wallow around in my mediocrity and live right under the radar so nobody expects anything of me.

It's like with church, I stop going because pretty soon people are going to expect stuff of me and I just don't know if I have the capability to give it. 

It's probably reason numero uno I'm not close with my family.

I'm scared spitless of people relying on me.

And yet I need to be needed.  It's why I exert so much control over my life and my family.  I have control over the friends and activities the boys participate in.  And maybe, just maybe I've always held Steven back unconsciously because I needed to have the financial superiority.  If I have control of the money, he can't leave me.

Now that he is poised to take on that position that zaps me of all my control (read: security).  Maybe that is the root of my apprehension. 

It all comes back down to trust.

I don't trust.  I feel like I can't trust.  I know this has everything to do with my dad dying when I was so young.  I have not had any security since I was eleven years old.  I anticipate bad things to happen to me. 

So maybe that's why I don't aspire for the good things.  Because surely if I get the good things then I have that much more to lose.

And I can't trust giving up that control.

A mediocre existance means minimizing the emotional damage.

So maybe that's what I've been about all this time.  Buffering and damage control.  I pad myself from pain, burying myself in fat, hiding myself from the world and making sure that my whole life is planned and mapped in such a way I can control my circumstances.

Maybe that's why Dan's death threw me for such a loop.  Because it sure wasn't expected.

So how do I get over this problem?  How do I learn to trust?

This fear has locked me up so much I can't even try new things.  I never learned how to swim. I can't give up that much control.  And I think it may take something of that magnitude to teach me how to trust life.

Because when it all boils down to it; that's what I trust the least.

It's time to re-read my book Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway.  And come June, it may be time to talk to a professional to give me the tools I obviously do not have to conquor some of these demons.

I don't want a mediocre life.

I deserve better.