Reclaiming an Intentional Life: Pre-Planning and Planning

Originally published at Am I the Only One Dancing?. Please leave any comments there.

 (Photo credit: Cathdew)

The Background:

Since about September of 2011, my life hasn’t really been my own. While working a very stressful forty hour a week job, I have had to do significant care-taking for my husband who had severe pain resulting in two shoulder surgeries. This doesn’t count helping him with his depression, or parenting Overthinker, or simply keeping the house up. A lot of that didn’t get done. Goodbye intentional life.

For nearly a year I went to bed emotionally and physically exhausted every night, with piled of unpaid and unopened bills laying around the house. I have had recurring bouts of migraines and irritable bowel syndrome and arthritic pain that will lay me out for a day or two, so I can rest, and then I’m back to it again.

Finally, Elwood’s pain levels have retreated enough that some normalcy is returning to my life. Since he is now working, I can ease back some on my work hours and focus more on family and future… but first, I have a mess to clean up. If you were to come into my house now, you would look around and (mostly) wonder ‘what mess’?

You can thank Mary for that. Mary is a friend of mine who has been picking up my house once a week for a few years now, because I have more money than time and she has more time than money. Even with her help, though, the cracks are showing.

What Now?

Now I return to an intentional life in several areas: self care, home care, and planning for the future. I am mostly in the ‘planning’ stages of these changes.

Self-Care:

I’m working back to exercising at least five days a week, cardio, strength, and flexibility. I am planning to combine gym workouts and home workouts, and to make it the first part of my day and the last part of my day. I am also going to work at ‘weekly batch’ cooking of soups and breads in order to have healthy foods available at all times. I’m also going to build more mindfulness time (including creativity) into my days.

Home Care:

This is the deal: Clutter has accumulated over the eleven years I have lived at this address, and especially in the last year. Also, simple maintenance tasks have been put off or ignored – the stuff I can do in addition to the stuff Elwood can do (when his pain is okay). What I plan to do is to tackle the house one drawer at a time, one day at a time, and sort between donate, sell and trash. Donations go in my car’s trunk to be dropped off on my way home from work. To sell goes in the basement to be saved for garage sales in the spring. Trash goes straight into the dumpster or recycling bin. The ultimate goal is to have a home that is at least 50% easier to clean. By the way, as the year warms again, this will include yard and house exterior care as well.

Planning for the Future:

Debts. They gotta go. New income source. It has to grow. Retirement account. It has to be reopened. Yeah. That bad. You all are invited along for the journey, both the successes and failures, and the places where I edit the plan and cut and paste new ideas. Let’s do this!

Up first? Wait and see. Before I act, I’m planning. I’ll share some of those plans with you and we’ll go from there.

Related articles

• Workout hard…. Rest hard (gofitmoms.com)
• Healthy equals happy (brandylovestomatoes.com)
• Advocating Mindfulness: The Key to Tranquility and Inner Peace (butterfly-maiden.com)
• Pain, anxiety, and depression (gettingpastpain.wordpress.com)
• Live With Intention. (sassanista.wordpress.com)