no happy medium

"To acquire balance means to achieve that happy medium between the minimum and the maximum that represents your optimum. The minimum is the least you can get by with. The maximum is the most you're capable of. The optimum is the amount or degree of anything that is most favorable toward the ends you desire."

i have no happy medium.  i BELIEVE in it.  i just dont know how to achieve it.  it seems like i have 2 speeds.  on and off.  i am either working obsessively on a project of some kind - be it work or fundraising or whatever  - or i'm doing nothing.  like absolutely nothing.  like i dont want to leave my couch nothing.  and as i've said before, i don't consider myself lazy.  i just really honestly dont know how to do anything a little bit.  not to say i do everything i do well.  but i do it ALOT.  or at least i focus on it alot.  and because i know how i get in my "off" moments, when i'm "on", i push myself really hard to get the most i possibly can accomplished, so i dont feel like a complete slack ass when i'm off.  i know this has to make me sound crazy.  but i have friends who ask me all the time how i can get something accomplished so quickly.  and the answer is that i have to do whatever it is quickly, before i lose my steam.  because once its gone, there is no telling when its coming back.

and i really dont believe its an attention thing.  i watch josh do a lot of the same things.  we can both work on a project for days/weeks/months - obsessively so, and then just one day be totally over it.  its like pop tarts.  i ate frosted brown sugar cinnamon pop tarts everyday - EVERY SINGLE DAY in high school.  i even took like 3 cases with me when i left for college.  to say i loved them would be a ridiculous understatement.  and then one day - bam - over it.  never have i touched them since.  and for no particular reason.  they are still yummy.  i still buy them and have them in my house almost all the time - my kids love them.  and yet, i dont eat them anymore.  because apparently i'm CRAZY. and they now fall into that huge, dark place where all of my old obsessions go.  i cant even tell you where that might be.  because again, they just go - and i have no idea where or why.


VERY occasionally i have to dig down and try to retrieve one of those "old" obsessions.  and i tell you its just plain strange.  sometimes i can "re-energize" so to speak about a subject.  and sometimes i just cant.  i'm finding that the older i get, the more i despise repetition.  clearly a huge indicator that my attention span is somewhat lacking.  so if i can find a new way to look at an old idea - then yeah - my energy level goes back up and we are ON again.

Trust only movement.  Life happens at the level of events, not of words.  Trust movement.  ~Alfred Adler

as always my life in some way shape or form comes back to food.  in this case its the analogy.  you want to know why i hate cooking?  because i find it boring.  i find it boring because back in the day when i was putting together actual dinners for my family, i had the usual staples that got us through.  fast forward a zillion years and i'm over all of them.  they served their purpose and now i just dont want to THINK about it anymore.  if someone emailed me what to make for dinner everyday, then i might start to like it again.  its not the COOKING that bothers me -its the THINKING ABOUT IT that drives me crazy.  i'm just over it.  i spent like 12 years obsessed with what to make for dinner, and now i dont want to think about it ever again.  unfortunately i still have 3 kids to feed.  which is a giant bummer for them, and makes me a horrible mom in terms of nutrition.  we get by.  mostly.  but i just cant motivate myself about it anymore.  i even had the horrible thought that i really cant wait until we can all just take a pill to get all of our nutrition allotments like in that horrible sci-fi movie with sandra bullock.  its just so much easier.  and how SAD is that.  my food motivation is gone.  i dont know where it went or how to get it back.  its now officially located in that big black hole where all of my other "things i used to do" now exist.

and of course the flip side is that its PEANUT BUTTER EGG season - and you all know what that means!!  i am getting the vast majority of my daily calories from the absolute perfect combination of chocolate and peanut butter that is the reese's pb egg :).  maybe thats the key.  if everything i get obsessed with is only available 2 months of the year, then maybe i wont have time to get bored.....unfortunately for my kids that's not the case.  and i've set such a low expectation threshold on dinners anymore that they are just happy when they dont have to fend for themselves.  horrible, i know.  maybe now that i'm not working as much it'll come back around.  but so far?  nope.

That destructive siren, sloth, is ever to be avoided.  ~Horace

what made me think of this today?  mostly it was the peanut butter eggs.  but i also am feeling like i'm fighting one of my "off" times.  its like i can feel it coming.  i went to the gym this morning, like every monday morning, and literally could NOT make myself lift.  anything.  it was a complete waste of time.  i mean, i actually WENT there, and still didnt work out.  THAT is never a good sign.  i'm hoping its just a case of winteritis.  i also am very susceptible to my outstanding hatred of all things cold weather related.  maybe today just was a bad combination of it being dark (and cold) outside, and me popping a peanut butter egg in my mouth at 6am.  probably not the best way to start off a monday.  clearly doesnt set me up for a successful day.  it pretty much said "deni, you may as well climb right back in bed and start over later".  but i didnt listen.  and i should have.

the moral of this story is A) if i ever offer to help you do something, you better JUMP on it when i offer  - because there is no guarantee that if you wait, i'll still be in my WORK mode.  i'll still help you, but i wont get NEARLY as much accomplished; and B) if anyone has any super easy dinner ideas that dont require much culinary skill and that dont come out of a box, my kids will forever be in your debt :)