get my life together

So I think I’ve made a bit of progress.

I took a step back today and realized I’m doing pretty damn good in school, all A’s and B+’s.

I’m giving someone who I never thought would actually work out a chance, and even though I’m a bit apprehensive, I’m happy.

My family and I are doing really good, oddly enough.

And I’m just feeling happy more often than usual.

I am definetly making progress.

<3

at it miserably.

Sucks to feel like you suck.

Tomorrow I start a new job! I am very excited about this particular job not only because the pay, hours, and benefits are all much better than I expected to find, but the work itself sounds fun and it is for a nonprofit organization that I really like and support. It’s like the perfect trifecta: good pay/benefits; fun work; good organization. I feel so lucky to have landed this job and I cannot wait for orientation tomorrow. It almost seems to good to be true and I really hope that I am not misunderstanding or overestimating things. But, assuming that this is going to be as good as I think, this job will help me achieve three of the things I laid out in the definition of this goal:

• “I have a source of steady, reliable income.”
  —-My three part-time jobs really fluctuate in hours and income. This new job is much, much steadier.

• “I can pay my monthly bills without too much stress, I have rebuilt my savings up to one month’s worth of living expenses, and I am following a plan to pay off my credit cards. Plus I have enough money to go out with friends.”
  —-Obviously having a steady, reliable income, along with living within my means, is going to get me to this second bullet point sooner rather than later. And to make the process even quicker, I am pledging to keep two of my part-time jobs until I am much further along in paying down my debt and increasing my savings.

• “I am taking paths and am open to experiences that may help me to see what kind of person I want to be, what I want to accomplish, what to try next, what kind of job I might like to have.”
  —-I think that I will really enjoy this work and perhaps I have even found a job and/or an organization I can stay at for a long time. But even if not, I think that this will be a really great experience and is definitely leading me on the right path. I feel like I am getting out of my rut.

mostly I want to get control on taking care of my body, quit smoking, start excerssising..ect, and get control of my finances.

Ok i am tryin 2 get my life together by starting a new life being my myself it has worked so far but not good enough… I try so many new things … like hang out with friends and promise ur friends you wnt do things nd u cnt break them …. i dnt give up on my self i keep tryin every day like they say more practice you get the better you gey at it …

I am lost,heartbroken,scared,ashamed,and tired. I am lost in my own mind. The heartbreak that I have suffered has paralyzed me in every aspect. I am scared that I will repeat mistakes that have put me in this black hole. I am ashamed that I will soon be 25 and have acomplished nothing. I am tired of being all of these things. I run away from my problems which only make things worse. I feel extremly blessed in many ways. I know that I possess endless potential and I want to do good in my life, I just dont know where to start? I am overwhelmed and need help. I just dont know who to ask?

Mondays are a good time to start new things. I woke up about an hour ago. I have kind of been just laying around – bad start. I don’t have to work today, but I still have stuff to do. No more being lazy. So sick of getting to the end of the day and realizing that I didn’t accomplish anything and I didn’t have any fun. I am not even putting off my responsibilities to do fun stuff! I am just putting off life altogether! There are still twelve hours left in this Monday and I am going to use them.

I have started listening to these podcasts call the iProcrastinate Podcast. The podcasts have info about scientific research into why people procrastinate and then they have tips to stop procrastination. I really like them because the research is interesting and presented in a way that is understandable even if you are not a scientist or a psychologist or anything. And the tips are good and not all corny and Stuart Smalley-ish.

So, I’ve been reading entries from other people who are working on this goal or who have accomplished this goal. Some of them have defined what exactly they mean by “together” and getting their lives there. And I think that makes sense and is a really good idea. Some goals there is a clear point where you can say that you have accomplished your goal – to go to Brazil or read five books or something like that. But a goal like get my life together is a bit more open-ended. So in order to both facilitate reaching that goal and to be able to say when I have achieved it, I am going to define it now.

I will consider my life together when:

• I am successfully using therapy and self-help techniques to manage and reduce problems like my desire to curl up in a ball and not speak to anyone for days on end; to make this specific and measurable, let’s say that I spend less than four days a month in hiding mode. (note: spending enjoyable time alone when I want to and need to doesn’t count; this is for those horrible times when I actually dread the ringing of the phone or the chiming of the doorbell.)

• I feel present in life. This one is difficult to put into words, but lately I feel like I am not really here or anywhere, not really experiencing things. Life feels like a bad photocopy viewed through smudged glass in a dimly lit room – that is to say I feel removed from it and unable to experience if fully, even when I’m looking right at it.

• I have a source of steady, reliable income. (I do have a few jobs right now, but two are pretty irregular when it comes to the schedule. The third I think will be a decent earning waitress job, but I literally just started, so I am not positive how many hours I’ll be scheduled to work or what my tips will be.)

• I can pay my monthly bills without too much stress, I have rebuilt my savings up to one month’s worth of living expenses, and I am following a plan to pay off my credit cards. Plus I have enough money to go out with friends.

• I am taking paths and am open to experiences that may help me to see what kind of person I want to be, what I want to accomplish, what to try next, what kind of job I might like to have. I have a very difficult time answering those questions, and perhaps I will never have a hard and fast answer to any of them. That could be OK, to strive for one thing, do it, experience it, and then do something completely different. But my current state of floating aimlessly without accomplishment or contribution to society or even enjoyment is boring and lame.

• I can say that I have consistently done all of these things for one year. That might seem like awhile, but I worry that without a kind of long period of diligence, I could easily slip back into old, bad habits. There have been lots of times when I felt like I was “fixed” and I wouldn’t be messed up anymore, only to almost immediately slide back down the slope.

Well, those are the criteria. Some of them are still kind of vague and not very measurable, but I am not sure how to translate the emotional stuff into a very specific number or something I can easily check off a checklist. I think I just need to honest with myself and really evaluate what kind of progress I make in those areas.

[This entry is very melodramatic. Melodrama is, unfortunately, the only tone I can achieve right now.]

It’s 11:59 on a Friday night. I’m sitting at my kitchen table messing around on the internet and listening to podcasts, eating peanut butter out of the jar, wearing the pajamas that I never changed out of this morning. I haven’t left my apartment since Tuesday. I turned my phone off at 4 this afternoon in order to avoid an unlikely but possible call from someone asking me to hang out tonight. I am behind on my rent and all of my bills. My bank account is almost empty. I have no idea what to do next, on any given day and in my life in general. I feel lost all the time, disconnected from life, and unsure of how to feel like I’m actually here instead of just floating by. Lately I find myself wishing that I was 18 again, and that I could redo the time from my high school graduation until now, and not fuck it up and waste it all. That is a very pathetic thought, very middle-age-crisis-ish. Never mind that I’m only 25.

I moved to Chicago a few months ago. Prior to moving I was doing pretty good, for me. I had a waitressing job that I really liked, I had money and my debt was mostly under control. I had great friends and I was having some of the most consistent fun that I’d had in a long time. I was finally starting to shake off the depression and social anxiety that had marked most of the last seven years. I was pretty happy. My move to Chicago had been planned about five months earlier, before I started to feel happy. I was feeling pretty shitty and I thought a change of scenery would be good. When my moving date came I decided to still go for it, even though it was really hard to leave everyone behind when things were finally starting to get really good.

I honestly believed that my move would somehow bring about a magical change. Unlike my other moves, which I had squandered by dragging my old hangups and bad habits with me, this one would be special. I had my newfound happiness-attaining abilities, a bolstered self-esteem, and a little money saved up. I was excited. I was going to leave behind all that sadness and anxiety, ditch my bad habits, and redeem myself.

Unfortunately, in the four months that I’ve been here, that hasn’t happened. Part of me wants to run away, move again, and this time really make the effort and change. But quitting and moving again just because I screwed up the beginning isn’t very smart. What if I just start doing that over and over? Besides, I like Chicago and I want to get to know it better before I leave.

So I need to make some big changes here. It is tempting to try to do everything at once, but all of my huge total life makeover plans seem to fail almost immediately. So instead I am going to focus intensely on the most important things that I need to do right now to get things on track, achieve a couple of those things, and then move on to a couple more. At first these won’t be very sexy goals – fixing my money situation and getting into therapy are the first two that I’m going to tackle – but once my life is less fucked up then I can have cool and interesting goals about traveling and learning and exploring. Woot.

I’m 23 and still no clue of what am I going to be, or do.. just fooling around on a day job isnt living. NEED TO PULL IT TOGETHER>>>