Today I made a realization about myself. I get the most work done when no one is around to bother me. I'd never really thought about it that way before, and I suppose I should have. Maybe that's why I haven't been as productive as I wish I had been.
In a way, I really kind of get it. It makes complete sense. When I was younger if I tried to clean my room, my sister would be lounging on her bed, the bottom bunk, reading more often than anything. I would be sorting out the things on the floor, and that room was always a disaster. It got to the point where I wanted a clean place so I could find things, but I wasn't willing to do all the work myself, so I would just clear a path to my bed and make sure all of my favorite clothes were where I could find them. All of my important stuff, books, clothes, music, it all ended up in my bed. I'm surprised there was room for me to sleep with it all!
Now, I can't entirely blame my sister on this one. When we were young, we were both slobs. I guess I just grew out of it, and from what I hear as of late, so did she. I think the whole family just got to the point where they just gave up, and I'll be honest, when I got frustrated and tried to clean, the rest of the family was lounging around, watching television, reading, or playing computer games. I wouldn't be surprised if I were guilty of the same when one of them decided they were in the mood to clean. To this day we've just never talked about it. I suppose we never will.
As an adult I lived with room mates that were the same way. I'd decide the house was a disaster and I couldn't take it anymore, so I'd finally get upset and clean the house, while they relaxed. It frustrated me to the point where, more often than not, I just stopped caring. My ex is very much the same way. Before I moved in, he and his room mate had a pretty disastrous home. I got it organized, but after that day it became a constant effort to clean the house while they didn't help. They were doing something far more interesting, and I honestly think they didn't care about the state of the house.
After all of that, I kind of harbor resentment when I'm cleaning the house and room mates or my partner aren't helping. It's one thing if they're working at home or cleaning something else, but just relaxing, it drives me insane. I just can't tolerate it anymore, so I just don't do it.
When there aren't any other adults home to care. It's not really a problem with my kids at home. I don't mind, after all, they're just kids, but other adults, especially if they helped make the mess, or it's their mess in the first place, I can't tolerate having them sit idly by. When it's just me, I don't have to worry about that. I don't have this inner resentment because I'm doing all the work while they sit around and do nothing all day.
It's even starting to spill over to other aspects of my life. I don't do as many crafts as I once did. I don't get as much work done, at least not most days. I'm just finding that when other adults are home and slacking, I tend to get lazy. It's like I somehow feel that I don't have to get up and do anything if they aren't.
This is a definite problem for me. While it's great that once everyone's gone, I spring to life, it's not productive. Where there are two stay-at-home partners in this house, I'm not often alone in the house. It means I don't get a lot of, well, anything done. It's not that I'm using my room mate as an excuse. Actually, quite the opposite. I'm kind of using her to give me more perspective on myself in this situation. This is a problem, and as long as I live in a situation where I need to clean and there's another adult home and relaxing, I'm going to have this problem!
Actually, to be fair, it wasn't so much the case when it was just my partner and I. Yes, we had a lot of clutter, but I was slowly beating that into submission. A process like that takes time. When you've got a lot of stuff, it takes time to get rid of or organize that stuff. What areas we had pretty well taken care of, he and I would take our turns at getting it done and moving on. We kind of had our own system. He would do the dishes and take out the trash, and I would do just about everything else.
I really need to find a way not to let other people sharing my home be a limiting factor on what I get done. I need to start changing my own habits, and I need to let go of that bitterness that some other adult in the house is just lazing about while I'm doing all the work. In some situations, I know I'm not the one doing all the work, but it feels that way. However, there have also been situations, like living with my ex, especially when he was out of work and I was the one with the job, where I felt almost justified. Even so, I need to get beyond that or I'm not going to ever get anything done in this house. It's slowly going to lead me to hibernate in my area of the house and hide from getting anything done until I'm here alone, in which case it will all be so massively overwhelming. That's only going to make things worse.
This has been a good realization for me. I have something else to work on now. I've got to stand up and start getting stuff done, no matter how bitter I am if someone else is not. I need to recognize when that bitterness is just because of the moment, or when I really am the only one doing all the work. When it's just the moment, I need to remind myself of all the things that person does around the house while I'm the one relaxing. When it's not, I have to recognize that it's not going to change, and think about the sense of accomplishment I'll feel when it's all done. One way or another, I have to deal with these feelings, or I need to realize that I just can't live with other people, at least outside my current immediate family. I know my room mates aren't just going to start being out all day so I can get stuff done, and I shouldn't allow myself to make excuses, so I need to find a way to make this change. I'll feel so much happier if I do.
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