I should still be in bed dozing a while longer on my day off, waking up slowly. Instead, I’m sitting here at 6:30 a.m. with my first cup of coffee, trying to figure out how I could’ve oh-so thoroughly screwed up my week (and month by extension).

I should be sitting out on the porch enjoying the very-short lived breeze of the day and the twittering birds and squirrels.

I should be not starting my day with a fantastic, smoldering headache that may only grow bigger if I don’t do anything about it.

Maybe that’s why I had to sit down and really think about how this week went so wrong first. Get the crap out of my head.

It went wrong mostly because of my choices or lack thereof. Probably 90% of it. I just let myself go and bounced all over the place, eating the wrong things at the wrong times, not-restful sleep, etc. I couldn’t believe how little I was thinking about what I was eating and when. And because I was hurting so much, and eating too much because of bad habits and crappy scheduling… let’s just say that did not work at all.

I’d forgotten that I’ve gradually started eating less than before, so when I’d go out and get something I used to like, I forgot that I can’t eat that much food anymore. But because I’d have that little voice in my head from childhood telling me that I need to not throw out food, I’d make myself sick trying to eat it all… and then actually get sick.

So, yeah, that definitely means losing more money for no good reason. I noticed that voice in my head only shows up to really screw me up, like “well, you’ve gone this far down the rabbit hole, why not go a little further?”

Ugh–I’ve worked so long to put that voice away for good. Maybe it’s some of my side projects, like trying to re-read the Bible and remembering my childhood with it that’s making me a little nuts. I am taking lots of notes and remembering some things I’ve read, contradictions I couldn’t deal with, and some personal stories about trying to live “Christian” that’s just raised my anger levels or my general upset to the point I couldn’t sleep. I put the deep thinking away for a couple of days and just went back to highlighting passages in my new note-taking copy to fill in the notes later.

That’s been the pattern for about a week. I’ve let stress and anxiety get to me in the worst ways. I ate too much, slept too little, thought about work too much, exercised WAY too little (not surprising with a total lack of energy and sleep).

I also got back on to a social weight-loss site I hadn’t been on in over a year. I was re-familiarizing myself for a couple of weeks there and this week I just kinda let it all go. I over-reached and spent WAY too much time on it each day because I was so “eager-beaver” and wanted to get to talking with people again and get on the weight loss bandwagon.

Unfortunately, this week I just stayed off of it for most of the week, and that meant not keeping track of my intake, skipping meal planning, and doing that downward slide. That was probably a good 25% of my stress and anxiety there. I did well with tracking my food intake the past few weeks, and then this week I didn’t even try.

I fell–hard–into bad, mindless habits. I just felt all around burned out.

I woke up this morning determined to get back on track, especially with two days off in a row. I traded with someone and wow–I plan on making this a great day.

My work-life balance is more out of whack than usual. Granted, work is going through some major changes in the foreseeable future, some of which we’re learning about daily and trying to keep ahead of, but i don’t have to take it home with me. The most I should expect from work when I’m AWAY from work is a quick question by a newbie or a reminder to bring my tool bag or something. That I would appreciate. Otherwise, I just need to leave work behind because it’s stressful enough just being there these days.

I still like the job, but so much is going on thanks to renovations around the corner, and a co-worker I have to start training to help me with my job, and another co-worker not pulling their weight (at least, not without bitching about every little thing because they only make so-much an hour and shouldn’t have to do ____.) I admit, that particular person’s been a big part of my headaches about work the past month, and if we weren’t going through this crazy renovation period, I bet she would’ve been fired already because everybody’s sick of her attitude.

Seriously, if you hate the job so much and don’t mind pawning off your hours (while refusing or “unable” to take over someone else’s if they’re sick), and treat the whole job like an inconvenience, why the hell are you still there, lady? Clearly you don’t need it all that much if you think of ways to get out of work as much as you can.

So, that’s a few percentage points of stress and anxiety right there (I can’t even guesstimate how much).

What really drives me nuts is all this exhaustion and out-of-balance behavior has killed my drive to improve. I wrote earlier in the week about how brain-dead I’ve been lately, unable to even sit and read a book (and get through my reading list, which I’m WAY behind on). Somehow, I’ve been totally out of motivation.

I did well last week, and then suddenly this week I started to “wing it” and I fell completely off the wagon and into a chasm. I want to get healthier and more energy, and get better at kickboxing and eventually into jiu-jitsu again. But nope, I let my T.O.M. and the pain direct me away from that. Some exercise could’ve helped, but the eating habits made it worse. I think deep down I used it as an excuse not to do anything, and it makes me so mad that I’d sabotage myself like that.

I haven’t been practicing piano and I’ve got a lesson tomorrow. I want to get better at it, but somehow I’ve let it completely fall by the wayside. I want to play, I LOVE to play (even if I’m not very good at it at all), but somehow, I just couldn’t bring myself to go back there and play all week. Actually, because I’ve had so much trouble with piano, I’ve done very little playing all the past month.

Yeah, but I’m never gonna get better if I DON’T PLAY! I just need to break down piano into smaller chunks like my teacher and I came up with, and put together a more workable plan. I do well with that, I just need to pay attention, be in the moment and stop freezing when I screw up. Getting past screw ups is so much harder on the piano, but I gotta get over it. Gotta get practicing, and on guitar, too.

Funny enough, the only thing that stopped my bad eating decisions and such this week was the other evening. I was killing time before my make-up guitar lesson (which didn’t happen because my phone needed a restart and I didn’t get his text saying he was sick and staying home). But a few blocks away I was at Guitar Center and just browsing the acoustics. I never thought I’d find THE guitar.

Actually, it wasn’t THE guitar I’d been thinking about the past few months–it was even prettier. I wanted to play a multi-hole guitar, but the only one they had the past few months was way up on the wall and cost way too much. They had several of them on the wall this week, and I picked one up that just startled me with how pretty it was. I got my pick out of my pocket and started strumming, and holy crap… it was lovely to hear.

I kept playing for about 20 minutes and knew I was gonna buy it.

Granted, I think it’s a dumb idea to just up and buy something on the fly, but I had thought about it a while. I just planned to drop that money AFTER tax season, giving myself a few months to pay some bills and see if they would have the one I was looking at in the store. I’d never played a multi-hole and didn’t wanna buy it online just to hate it. Well, they actually had SEVERAL that just came into the store and it sounded so damned nice, better than I thought it would. And it felt more comfortable than the other acoustics I have (probably because it’s skinnier and the neck feels almost like an electric’s neck).

So, yeah, I dropped some money on it. Strange how I stopped spending recklessly on fast food and other crap after that and just went back to “normal” (well, a good “Normal” that allows for introspection rather than mindless actions.

I don’t agree with “shopping therapy”, but apparently it worked to get me back on track. I guess I’d found my moment of happiness in the whole wretched week and I couldn’t pass it up. At least it was a couple hundred cheaper than the guitar I initially had my eye on.

And it got me thinking about all this stuff today, and how I’d let myself slip so far off the wagon. I’m grabbing the rope to pull myself back on board and get things going right. I let everything go this week–cleaning, cooking, practicing, playing with the dogs even–but today means changing that.

I know a big part of my problem is trying too many things at once. So, I’m gonna restrict myself to 30 minutes on that health website this morning, 15 or 30 minutes in the evening (to record my results for the day instead of logging in over and over to put every little thing in and letting the day waste away exploring and writing more stuff).

I’m gonna clean up the yard and mow, then break down my day into cleaning and practice times, changing them up in manageable chunks. I do better when I do that. It reminds me of the early PC days, when you’d turn on the machine, make a pot of coffee, log in, go make a cup of coffee, wait for the internet to connect, fold some laundry, etc. (hee hee). But I can get a lot done as long as I remember where I left off and make a checklist of stuff to do for the weekend (not just today). And not so much due to time, but accomplishment.

Though yes, time’s a factor. I don’t want to spend a full hour doing something that should take 15 minutes just because I allotted a possible hour stretch there.

So, today’s a new start. Gonna get some Tylenol to kill this headache (and another cup of coffee), go put my shoes on and take these patient pups outside in the sun and very-slight breeze.