Lately, I’ve been feeling like there are not enough hours in the day.

Now I understand everyone feels that way sometimes. It is a fact of life that things will pile up, then things will clear.

One day we are almost frantic to get things done and the next we are trolling through Pinterest on our phone looking for a recipe for a crock pot breakfast. Why? Because we are bored.

But thinking about my future and what it will look like is, too me, different.

After all, I am trying to envision what the next 30 years are going to look like. What will I do with my time, how will I get the most value out of each of them? How will I recharge my internal batteries, my stores of positive energy? What will my days look like?

I learned the hard way that cutting myself off from people has unimaginable side effects.

Depression set me up for that when the two of us decided that early retirement was a marvelous thing, that I would love working my side business from home and that I would be the master of my days. So, I listened. And everything I had built up to that point seemed to go up in flames.

Hearing the soft, patient, repetitive voice of depression kept me from going full force into retirement. It mucked up my efforts to focus on going full time with my side business and did everything it could to distract me from the feelings that I was losing ground in my daily battery recharging.

I found out later this is what is meant by self-care.

And depression was telling me to ignore it, to focus on everything else, anything but myself. And I listened. I almost said “and stupid me, … I listened.” But I know that is labeling, unhelpful Thinking and sets the stage for shoulding on myself.”

In the Peer Support meeting I attended last week, someone shared that they were anticipating a change in living arrangements in the coming days, and she was thinking about “what her life would look like.” I almost feel out of my chair. This is exactly what I have been thinking off and on since I was in the hospital.

I’ve always had a five-year plan, a 10-year plan for my life.

You know, the big picture stuff. But I never thought much about what each day would look like. I never thought much about how I could make the best use of each day. And I never thought in terms of or used the words self-care.

In the end, it comes back to what I can control.

Things that will happen, when they happen, how many things happen in a day is not always in my control. But I can always control my Attitude towards it. Looking at the week and saying “I can only do things on this day because I will be too busy on the other days” limits my ability to get things done or take advantage of unexpected down time.

I have preset my thinking to “I can’t” on these days.

How jacked up is that? I am telling myself in advance, that my day will be too jam packed to do anything else. Yet the reality is there are many moments, every day, that I can take advantage of if I just have a better attitude towards these moments.

I will work on this later, because right now I do not have the time. I must get ready for work.

What do your days look like?

The post Reminding myself I can control my attitude towards each day appeared first on My Concealed Depression.