Unfuck Your Habitat

themoonintheskies:

I do not know what I would be doing right now without UFYH. I would not be doing this well. 

This is to put things into perspective. I have had a lot of changes in the past year. I moved out west. And then I moved back east. In debt. Which makes me more prone to panicking and depression. Also I am a school board temp, so not only do I not work or get paid in the summer, I don’t always have work during the school year. But I had very generous family who helped me out to visit family in Norway this summer because it had been planned two years ago, when I was able to afford it. But while I was gone? My brother and my sister-in-law visited the city and stayed in my place, which I cleaned before I left in that bad kind of marathon-y way. My mother then checked it out to make sure it was set up for them after I left, apparently spazzed, and /cleaned/. So I came home to a clean, relatively tidy (a lot of stuff was just thrown in boxes so it was out of the way) apartment.

I had a clean slate. And I was /terrified/ of fucking it up. Again. Because I marathon, and then it stays tidy for a week, and then I backslide, and it gets to just, ugh. No. And I hate it, I can’t relax when it’s not tidy, or I have dishes or laundry, or I need to vaccuum. But I would just turn of my brain because the thought of doing it would lead to thinking about EVERYTHING that had to be done, and it was overwhelming.

And then I stumbled somehow, thankgod, onto UFYH.

My apartment has been clean for almost a month. I have KEPT it clean (to the point where my Mother and I had dinner together on Monday and the only thing she said was “you need to dust the bookshelves” and she is a neat freak). It is even slowly getting more organized, as I am in the slow process of purging things before I move to a nicer place in a few months (hopefully).

Not just that? I’ve got the most work done on a project that I’m working on for my Union done at home ever. And it feels manageable, even though it’s a huge project and I was a bit nervous before about being part of it. Now I am so on top of things, when we talk about having a new chair and co-chair, I may put my name forward, because I think I would be excellent at it. 

Today though? Today I was worried, and a bit stressed. I had eight jobs to apply for, with a two hour deadline to finish fixing/updating my cover letter and resume, since I only got it back with notes on it today (technically last night, but I needed to go to bed at a sane hour for work this morning).

I was stressed. My brain was starting to wander into that space of distracting myself to avoid working. And then I thought about the time, and what I had to do. And thought “two 45-15’s”, I can do this. I can do this in a way that will make me proud.

Two hours later?

Done. Fucking DONE.

So basically. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Life feels manageable again. And it’s because I realized I was looking at too big of a picture all the time. Now I have lots of little floaty status bars in my imaginary world with timers attached. Instead of the one giant impossible one that I was judging myself by before.