- Work on getting documents in order: Will, letter of instruction, paperwork on all our debts
- My deployment binder: Getting important documents organized in that binder, completing list of emergency numbers
- Reading literature about deployment
- Making a detailed blog entry about all the work I had done and listing links and resources for others.
- Cleaned the house and cooked meals for James's friends who came from out of town to visit him before he leaves
- Drove 30 minutes to another town to spend a long afternoon having coffee with one of my best friends, saw her house, and met her new puppy
- Took a nap
- Went out for dinner with our guests and ate a huge steak
- Met one of my good friends and had blueberry beer and friend pickles, talked, and laughed our asses off at one of our favorite local bars
- Slept in, then went out for waffles with our guests and spent the morning with them
- Took a nap
- Watched Iron Man 2 with James (on cable for 3 hours)
- Did not read anything about deployment, blog, or check things off of any lists
In getting ready for deployment, a very stressful time that it's important to prepare for, it's super easy to lose focus of the moment. I tend to get obsessive about my lists and all that I need to do to the point where I am burnt out and stressed. In that stress, I can get anxious and cranky and start to avoid the people who matter. When I talk to my friends, deployment is all I talk about because it's always on my mind. I spent most of last week in this place, feeling so busy and stressed and overwhelmed that I just couldn't handle anything else. I thought that the best thing to do was to just spend a weekend cranking out important work so that I would feel better. Fortunately, I accepted offers when friends called and wanted to hang out as well as focused on our company from out of town. I "put off" my planning for today. But after our weekend guests left, I decided I was too tired for my "important work" and could not say no when my husband asked me to sit down and watch TV with him. And that's I spent my evening.
As we sat and watched Iron Man 2, I started feeling the urge to write - something I haven't felt in several days. I was beginning to get concerned, honestly. I thought "what do I have to write about? I did nothing productive or deployment-related." The thought of doing research for a blog post about important prep work sounded awful. I had pretty much resigned to not posting because I didn't want to admit my "extreme lack of work." Then I realized, that was exactly the point. What I did was relax, share what's going on in my life with my friends (including things non-deployment related, because those things are still happening as well!), catch up on my friends' lives (because, despite James impending departure date, they also have important things going on and need me as well), enjoyed playing hostess, napped and took care of myself, and spent time with my husband. In the midst of all my lists and all my "important work," these things matter, and my life is still happening. I still have needs, my friends have lives, my husband is still here, and being present in my life is the most important thing I can do any time in any situation.
While I may not have gotten any "important work" done, I'm so happy that this is how I ended up spending my weekend and refuse to let myself feel guilty. Letting go of my occasionally ridiculous expectations of myself is what allowed to relax and be present this weekend - not getting the work done and "out of the way" so I could relax later. And eventually, instead of staring at the computer and feeling like I have nothing important to say, I got inspired, poured myself some Cupcake wine (Reisling tonight), and wrote about my real success this weekend: not obsessively preparing and giving myself room to breathe.
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