watershed day

I'm not sure if it was just hormones playing havoc with my brain today, or if I really am losing control.

Apart from reading my appointment time upside down, thinking I'd double booked for tomorrow when I had not, and spending all day wondering which appointment to cancel (hair or beautician - vital decision there), I made it through the day OK. However, as I headed home, I felt suddenly overwhelmed by all I need to do. I had this sense of scrabbling around, trying to do too much and doing none of it well.

I do not like that feeling.
Yes, I am a perfectionist.

It set my mind to counting down days again, something I'm trying not to do. But if you must know, I have six weeks and two days until I quit the hospital and have a holiday. Friday December 18th is becoming something of a watershed for me. It is a marker of freedom, change, life and joy . (Let's hope I'm not disappointed!)

I keep asking myself if I am seriously deluded here. Have I gone soft? Lost touch with reality? Why is it so important to me to leave the hospital?

Because the decision to resign is symbolic of a significant shift in my thinking. While Frank worries I will sit and surf the net all day, I'm dreaming of a clean, clean house, and the sense of having a handle on things. No more chasing my tail, or feeling like I'm surviving by the skin of my teeth.

Call me old fashioned, but I think we women have sold ourselves short. When we tripped off into the workplace, we didn't ditch anything at home, we just took on more. Here we are juggling family, home, work, life (and often study), telling ourselves we're making a good job of it. And we are, but at what cost? How do we measure our success on this?

If it's by counting the dollars, then maybe we are doing OK. We have bigger houses, nicer cars and better holidays. There's more expendable income, but again I ask, at what cost? Why are our children committing suicide at phenomenal rates? Why are we divorcing so often? Why are we the highest anti-depressant users ever? And what about all those ever increasing chronic diseases? (Sorry, no references here, just a coalescing of multitudinous news reports)

Well, I'm opting out. I'm tired of feeling like I'm never on top of anything, never doing anything well. My vegetable patch is an annual disappointment, the windows are embarrassingly filthy, and while our living area is tidy, there lurks a mess in many a dark corner. I cannot find time to phone friends, I owe too many people letters, and I give Frank the dregs of my day. I don't really want to live this way.

Maybe I am soft, or harking back to a long lost era. Perhaps I am a disappointment to the women's movement. If either of those things are true, I'm sorry. But I cannot find it within myself to keep striving and straining to do everything the way I have been. I'm coming down on the side of having a lot less money but a lot more time, and hopefully a lot more contentment and satisfaction. Call it all a big experiment, but I'm looking forward to a new way of life.

I'll let you know how it goes!