Never Let You See Me Cry

I just woke up from a dream with real tears spilling from my eyes. I can't remember the last time that happened.

I dreamed I was out of town with friends, and we'd split up - half to eat and half to shop. I was the last to finish eating and suddenly realized everyone was gone. I started texting everyone, and one by one they told me they'd gone home. I realized I was alone, out of town, with no way of getting home, and everyone had left me.

In the dream, I was panicked, lonely, and afraid. I couldn't find anyone to help me get home. Then after what felt like an hour, I ran into all of my friends. They were laughing. It was all a prank. No one had left, but they thought it would be funny to trick me. I started crying, and they continued to laugh. "Stop being so dramatic!" they told me.

The last words of my dream before I woke up were mine: "Do you guys actually think I would let you see how vulnerable I am, if I weren't seriously upset? Do you think I'd let you see how abandoned and lonely I felt? Do you think I'd actually let you see me cry?"

I woke up, and fat tears were dripping down my cheeks.

I'm reading a book, Emotional Intellligence 2.0. It starts with giving you a code for an online quiz to assess your emotional intelligence. I'd say I'm very emotionally intelligent, so I was actually really annoyed when it scored me much lower than I expected. I read the reasons, and it came down to this: I am a great listener, a great communicator, I'm empathetic and socially aware, BUT. I don't talk about myself enough. I don't open up about my own feelings or weaknesses with others.

At first I thought, "Well, of course not! Communicating is about listening to others and understanding them, not talking about myself." But the more I read, the more I understood what it was saying. Communication is a two-way street. How can others trust me (particularly professionally) if they don't know me? If I don't open up to them while they open up to me, that's not effectual communication. That's not emotional intelligence, to hide your vulnerabilities and weaknesses and fears from the world. That's being a counselor, not a friend.

The part that confounded me at first was the online analysis that I don't share myself. I have this blog, right? I wrote a book about the most vulnerable time in my life, right? But truth is, that's my personal life, and it's also through a medium of written word. In my face-to-face interactions, I don't talk about myself. When someone asks me how I'm doing, I say great and immediately turn it back to them. Today, I spoke on the phone with a friend/work connection who asked how my new job is going. Though surely she wanted details, my response was, "I love it! So how are you?"

I can share myself through ink and paper, keyboards and screens, but not in real life. And this is doubly so when it comes to my professional life.

What I think was most telling about my dream was that the group of friends I was with were my work friends from my most recent job. The last words, "Do you think I'd actually let you see me cry?", speak volumes. I remember once, early on in that job, I was getting extremely overwhelmed, and one of my coworkers (someone I consider a friend) saw me and stopped to talk. The tears welled up in my eyes, my throat got tight, and I couldn't speak without the fear of losing it. I hated, HATED, him see me nearly break down and cry. I was humiliated, and even now my face burns at the memory. It was him that I said this to my dream.

I don't like showing weakness. I don't like asking for help. I want to help others, but I don't want them to help me. I listen to people all day long; I seem to have some kind of magnet for people to share stuff with me. And I love being there for them, listening to them, being a safe place for them to let it all out. But I don't share myself back, not intimately, not in real life beyond the computer screen. I don't want people at work knowing when I struggle or when I'm uncertain. I want to look amazing and self-assured at all times. I feel this is entirely justifiable! Of course I want my colleagues and those who report to me to see me as strong and competent. But do I do myself and everyone else around me a disservice by not being honest about what makes me vulnerable - what makes me just like everyone else?

This is something I am working on. I can be professional at work and still share myself to whatever the appropriate level is. (This is something I still can't figure out; maybe the book will help.) I need to be able to say on some days work is hard. Today was hard. Today I handled a three-child home fire fatality story. It was emotionally a very difficult day. I found myself at times wondering what I'm supposed to do here. I found myself at times wondering if I could really do this job. I had to push my personal emotions aside to get a job done, which I felt guilty about in return. I need to be able to admit this. I know I'm not the only person in the world to doubt herself or feel emotionally conflicted.

I definitely need to work on this with my friends. If I'm asked about myself, I need to talk a little about myself. Most people who genuinely care about me genuinely want to hear how I'm doing. It doesn't make me arrogant or narcissistic. It just makes me real. Human. Emotionally intelligent.

But vulnerability hurts, and I've learned to be ashamed of it.

September Shopping Challenge 2016

Hello, my name is Lori, and I'm a shopaholic.

I love shopping, any kind, anywhere. Grocery stores, big box stores, boutiques, bookstores, malls, Amazon. My sister-in-law even took me into a tractor store once, where I discovered how badly I wanted to buy a chicken coop. When I have had a stressful day, my therapy is retail therapy. It's a weakness, a flaw, a sin, but I am hopeless. Every pay period I vow to do better, then a new pair of shoes calls to me or Terry Gross reviews an author of a new book or Facebook tries to sell me a Bernie Sanders action figure. (I have almost bought that so many times.)

In 2013, I started the September Shopping Challenge to help me learn to curb my spending and control my budget. We had just moved back to America, Scott had just started his new job, and we were at the start of trying to rebuild our lives. We had no furniture, no car, no books or toys, just the suitcases-worth of belongings we'd brought over from Scotland. I started the challenge to help me manage spending in those early, stressful days.

I did the challenge again in 2014 as a refresher course in budgeting but skipped 2015. This year - 2016 - I am going to attempt the challenge again, because my shopaholic tendencies of late have been getting the better of me.

Each year, I come up with new SCC rules to help guide me through the month and to outline areas I need help with my habits.  They usually involve only going shopping once a week and making lists and sticking to pre-planned menus, schedules and budgets. Then I add any other rules or exceptions that I feel are needed to make the month successful.

You can read about the origination of the September Shopping Challenge, the first year executive summary, and the second year's game plan for a little more background. Here are some helpful lists. If after reading this, you think you'd like to join me in this challenge, leave a comment (with your blog if you plan to blog about it!) and we'll keep each other motivated.  How does that sound?! (Ridiculously fun, y'all, for real. We could start a Facebook group and everything.)

This year, I have outlined the following rules.

1. Grocery shopping. We get paid every other Thursday, so the weekend is usually the best time to get the shopping done; however, usually by Wednesday, our kids (and my husband) have managed to eat everything in the house, so waiting until Saturday is almost always impossible. So in September, I will allow myself two grocery days a fortnight: Thursday (or Friday) after work and then Saturday or Sunday.  The in-between week will have one grocery day allowed for picking up any necessities we're running low on - milk, cereal, bread. Not brownies. No, Lori, brownies do not count.

2. Budgeting. We have a pretty well organized budget as it is, but we always try to leave a cushion which ends up being treated as free play money, not the cushion it ought to be. This September, that cushion will be filled with fluff and will remain fluffy. (Cushions, fluff, you get the metaphor. Give me a break. It's 9:30 pm, and I'm tired.) Regarding the budget, I will also make one other adjustment which I hope will become a permanent one. Knowing that we have that cushion money, every paycheck before I've had time to sit down and pay the bills and allocate the funds to the appropriate accounts (we have several actual accounts, like we're a family business or something), I have a bad habit of doing a little pre-budget spending. That might be getting pizza for dinner that night, ordering a book from Amazon I've been dying to read or buying something new for the kids.  My goal for this month is to do that little bit of spending AFTER paying bills and allocating funds.  That way I have a better method of tracking which fund or account that money came from. Was it from my personal spending money? Grocery fund? It needs to come out of something other than the cushion fluff.

3. Spending money.  Now that Scott and I are both working, we pay ourselves an "allowance" that is totally our own business. Scott does with his spending money whatever he likes and I do the same. The only problem is, I put the grocery money in the same account as my spending money, which often means the two get hopelessly intertwined. Some weeks I end up using my fun money on groceries or kids' needs, and others I end up taking a little out of the grocery fund to cover something for myself. This month, I'm going to keep a transaction record to keep the two separate.

4. No spend days.  This is the hardest part for me. I like to spend money. I like to shop. If I need to get away from life, I like to go to the book store and wander the aisles for hours. (And it's humanly impossible to leave a book store without a book or four.)  Online shopping has made this even worse. Why, just today, I was at a Women In Networking luncheon where the speaker, Emily Reeves Dean, was talking about her book that she self-published, and me being a big supporter of local authors and self-publishers, ordered her book from Amazon. Just sitting there, sipping my iced tea, I spent $11.99. So through the month of September, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday will be firm No Spend Days.  Thursday or Friday and Saturday or Sunday will be grocery days, but only two of them, not three or four. The other two remaining days will be No Spend Days too.  If I want to spend my fun money, I will wait until one of the shopping days. The benefit of this is that I do not make tiny little purchases throughout the week that add up. If it's something I want badly, I'll still want it at the end of the week. If by the end of the week I don't want it anymore, then it wasn't worth buying to start with.

5. Exceptions. There will be one exception to all of this. Scott and I allow ourselves one evening a week to eat out unplanned.  This is usually on a day where work was exceptionally draining and neither of us want to cook. Lolly's soccer season starts back up in September too, so it might come on a night when we have soccer practice and did not get dinner beforehand. I will continue having this exception. It's needed for my well-being. It may fall on a No Spend Day, but that is okay, because this is the exception and comes out of one of our personal spending allowances. Either Scott will treat me or I'll treat him (and the kids, of course.)

So that's this year's September Shopping Challenge plan. Create your own plan or budget for the month and see what kind of savings you can make or good habits you can form! It'll be fun, I promise! (And by fun, I mean torture-but-worth-it-in-the-end.)

Juggling vs Balancing

Tomorrow is my one year workiversary.

This day last year, as I prepared freezer meals and ironed my clothes for my first day at work, I asked some pressing questions about outside-the-home working mums and how they managed all the tasks still required to keep a home running smoothly. Being the perfectionist I am, I needed to know how they could leave the circus but still keep all the juggling balls in the air. After one full year of gainful, outside-the-home employment, I can finally answer those questions.

They can't.

Or maybe "they" can, but I can't. Or maybe I could, but I haven't figured out how yet.

Who takes the car in for oil changes? How do you keep up with the laundry? How does dinner get made every night after you've been working all day?

No one. You can't. It doesn't.

Those are the answers I've discovered anyway. Supermoms out there, please beg to differ. Then give me all your tips. Then give me your housekeeper's and nanny's phone numbers, because I don't believe you.

This is the great, ground-breaking wisdom I have discovered after a year.  Wait for it - this is going to blow your mind:

Some things - a lot of things - have to be let go.

*Cue Elsa in a blue dress making an ice castle*

I hate it, but I'm accepting it. My left-side brain, my obsessive nature, my perfectionist tendencies torment me constantly about the lack of organization in my home, but this is reality. One of our kids is still small. The other two are getting old enough to reliably help me and Scott out. Anyway, it's only for a short time, really. People may judge our yard for its tall weeds and our couch for its pile of (clean) laundry and our floors for the Cheerios stuck to it, but this is life right now. It's not forever, but it is what it is right now.

Sure I could expend energy keeping the house spic-n-span every night, and Scott could expend energy mowing the grass and cooking dinner.  Or... I could keep myself sane by taking an hour to go the gym while Scott takes an hour on Reddit. We could come straight home from work every single night and cook and clean until bedtime, or we could order a pizza every now and then and play with the kids.What's most important right now?

After a year, I'd say that I've settled into my new routine pretty okay. It's not perfect, it's not what I know it could be or exactly how I want it to be, but I'm accepting it for what it is. I know eventually I'll get there (or hire a housekeeper), so for now I'm learning to balance. Balance - isn't that my theme for this year? Balancing instead of juggling all the balls I hold in my hands. And balancing sometimes requires setting a few things down for a few minutes to steady yourself.

Maybe some day in the future I'll reach the perfection I long for, but for now, I'm okay with life being a little messy and a lot imperfect. Or at least, I'm learning to accept it being that way.

October Dress Project: The End Times

Dear friends,

Here's the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

I quit.

I'm not typically a quitter. No, I'm far too obsessive, protectionist, and competitive to quit.  I will usually persevere through all manners of personal inconvenience just to prove a point (usually to literally no one who cares).  Like last year when I cooked with pumpkin every day of November. It drove everyone in my house mad, but dammit, I FINISHED THE PUMPKINPALOOZA CHALLENGE.

But this year I'm going to be all about balance, and you know what needs to go? Perfectionism.

At work we're doing a "Stress-Less Challenge". From the get-go, I was like, "YES, I'M GOING TO GET ALL THE POINTS!!!!!!!!" And then two days into it, stressed from trying to fit in 30 minutes of exercise every evening after the kids went to bed while exhausted and thinking of all the other gazillion things I needed to do, I realized this wasn't really achieving the intended "stress-less" affect. I didn't give up - I just gave in.  I'll get SOME points by the end of the challenge, just not all. I feel like a bit of a failure, yes. But I'll stress less, and isn't that the real point?

Regarding ODP though, I just flat out quit. It's the home stretch, I'm nearly there, but I quit.

Monday, Day 26, was the start of "Employee Appreciation Week" at work, which involves JEANS DAYS ALL WEEK. Y'all, there are only so many ways to wear The Dress with jeans, and there are only so many days I'm allowed to wear jeans to work, and one of the benefits of Jeans Days is t-shirts, not dresses tucked in. I tried wearing a t-shirt over The Dress tucked into trousers* on Monday. It was okay, yet I just wasn't feeling it. So you know what? I bloody well quit.

*Trousers, not jeans, because I had an external meeting** that day. External meetings trump Jeans Day every sad time.

**The external meeting got cancelled. Lost my Jeans Day for nowt.

Day 25 is not pictured. It was a dark and stormy day, and I wore The Sunday Dress in the least interesting way possible - over jeans, under a warm hoodie with fluffy socks. It wasn't worth photographing, even on my crappy camera phone.

Day 24 I did not wear The Dress. It was Saturday, and I was busy. I just never put it on. Hashtag SorryNotSorry.

Day 23 I did wear The Dress, but it was literally exactly how I'd worn it the day before, with furry black boots and a scarf. The only difference was a pair of jeans underneath. In fact...

Just imagine Day 22 with a pair of skinny jeans and that was Day 23.  

Day 21 was possibly one of my favorite days. I loved the red trousers and the red scarf with The Dress tucked in.  

Day 20 was also kind of cute.  Wore The Dress under an A-line skirt I bought at Tesco a millennia ago, a black infinity scarf and black flats.

Wanna hear a funny story? After a month of crappy camera phone pictures because my real camera wouldn't work, my real camera started working again.

I'm sorry, ODPers, for my lack of enthusiasm and sticktoitiveness this year. It's been a helluva few months. I might possibly be ready by next October. ODP16!

With love,

A Winner Who Let Herself Quit Just This Once

The Importance of Being Human

It's been almost three months since I've been to the gym. After going religiously for a year and a half, I've really missed it.

Well, today after work, I tried out a new Zumba class at the gym down the road.  While it lacked the rowdy energy and ambiance of the Zumba classes at my old venue, it was still good.  Good enough, anyway. Good enough to consider just joining that gym, because it's close and cheap and open 24 hours and I need to find a place soon.  Tomorrow I might try out the Yoga class.

One of the things I miss most about working out is the feeling of control over my life. I used to feel guilty for needing control, but now I've come to accept that it's just my personality type. I'm a control freak. I need to have control over things. Is that such a bad thing? Yes, it can take over my life in a bad way, but in other ways, it keeps me calm, it keeps me going forward. Getting regular exercise feels good and keeps me level and grants me control over various aspects of my health, such as what I eat. I feel I make better choices over all when I've kept up my exercise routine. It clears my head.  It wakes me up. I love the way it feels, the burn, the sweat, the energy, the endorphin.

I don't think it's a bad thing to need a sense of control, as long as there is a little perspective. My problem is, I don't have much of that.

The problem I have with control is the feeling of disarray and confusion I feel when I don't have it. When things don't go as planned, when routines get interrupted, when I make a mistake, I tend to lose it. I'm not only a control freak, I'm a perfectionist.

And that's what I think I'm going to work on this October and this next year.  Imperfection.  Or rather, allowing a little imperfection. There's probably a better word for it, like Acceptance. Letting It Go. While I've stopped feeling guilty over needing control in my life, I also recognize I must find some Balance.  I seriously need to learn to relax a little and accept that things cannot always be perfect. I must find the things that grant me control - like exercise - but also let go of some things that are simply too much for me right now. I hate that my house is harder to keep clean now that I'm at work eight hours a day. I hate that I'm not the mum who can go on field trips and help at class parties anymore. I hate that dinner isn't on the table at 6:00 sharp every night now.  But I've got to learn to accept these things, I simply have to. I'm only one person; I'm only human. I try to be superlori, but I can't always achieve that. No one can. Perhaps it's the year for learning to Let It Go, for creating Balance, for finding Acceptance. What's that serenity prayer? "God grant me the serenity to change the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference." Seems about right.

Balance. I like that. We'll see what all comes out of October, but I'm thinking that will be the main theme of the upcoming year. Balance. It seems to fit. It's something I need to work on.

Oh, and speaking of October...

Cue segue:

ODP Day 2!

Talk about something that makes me feel in control! I love ODP. I love the challenge. Today was Casual Friday at work, so I couldn't pass up the chance to wear The Dress with jeans. I tucked The Dress in to a pair of straight leg jeans and folded up the sleeves to vary the length. I added one of my favorite infinity scarves and brown flats. I wore my hair down and natural (it's getting so long!) with a pearly headband. Which I'll admit, gave me a bit of a headache all day but was worth it for the cute factor.

One thing about this dress - I freaking love that it has pockets, but pockets make it difficult to tuck in and wear as a shirt. Still. Pockets are WORTH IT.

Another thing - since we moved, I can't find my camera. I'm sure it's somewhere in a box or something, but until I find it, I must rely on my phone for photography and my husband or children for photographers. Or I can just take camera selfies, like every other human being in the developed world. Selfie stick this year instead of a tripod?

(Just look at this. My hair is getting so long!)