Life can be funny sometimes; it throws all sorts of things at us and they can have a variety of impacts. From not an impact to taking a wrecking ball to your life and feeling of everything being shattered including what feels like the progress or movement toward goals. This could be an intentional choice or something you did not expect to happen at all. I unintentionally took a wrecking ball to a lot of aspects of my life recently by adopting a 6-month-old puppy. Doing this has felt like I turned my life on its head for a few weeks. I have been figuring out how to add things back in to not only feel like I have a bit of control but also balance. I must acknowledge though that in the end, the balance or normal that I find will not be the same one that was there before.
I must be honest that this effect on my life was not what I expected, so I got blindsided by how much work a puppy, let alone a dog, is. On a side note, though this has given me a lot of respect for new parents as I feel I may have gone through a fraction of what they deal with. A very small fraction at that. Back to the topic at hand, though, I felt like I had no control for the first few weeks, and everything was upended. This led to more than one mental breakdown with lots of tears. But slowly I have been finding a balance so to say. With that feeling, I can put the effort into this and other things that I am working toward. It is nowhere what it was but that is to be expected. This has been a process of relearning how to get things done, from chores around the house to putting time on things like fitness and this blog. But the upside is that I feel like I am gaining the motivation to take those things even further and put more effort into them.
Something else that I have struggled with, and I know that I am not alone in this is asking for help. Adding someone who needs so much attention into my life has forced me to rely on others to help me with things like chores. So, it has meant working with my roommate to redistribute who does what chores and when they do them. This has had a bigger impact on me than my roommate may know in having such a constant person I can feel comfortable saying ‘hey I need help getting this done.’ Which has always been harder than some might first think for me to say. As discussed before the upending forced me to have to start to change how I think but having that constant person who I feel safe and comfortable asking and having had to be forced to ask because it is impossible to do it all by myself now. That was a hard lesson to learn; no effort to force it would allow it to work that way. While I am not proficient at asking for help, I feel like the whole situation has forced me to get better at this. A sink or swim situation so to say.
Before I was able to ask for help or even consider it, I was overwhelmed by everything. The whole situation for a long while felt like I bit off more than I could chew. I had just started to see progress in my fitness goals, I am someone who may not own to liking a schedule but in some aspects of my life, I live by it. My family will own that changing it is a big deal for me. I had several mental breakdowns and owned that I would have them and still do though not as often. I felt it was important to have them and own that I was going to have them to not try to bottle feelings up. It never goes well when I try to do that. I did bottle things up for a long time and it never ended well. They always came out and normally at the worst possible moment for them to come out. Now by asking for help, and not trying to pretend I know everything about dogs I have been feeling a balance in my life again and have been making progress toward my goals again. The progress admittedly is still slow and maybe even a little slower than before but I also own that I am navigating new stuff, so I try to give myself grace. That is another thing this whole process has taught me as I continue to push for my goals while navigating all of this, give yourself grace.
This has also been another situation where I have had to fight to not let my goal. The easy route would have been to just place it on the back burner and that ends oh so well. It has been a struggle not to let this happen, but I feel I have been successful. Getting runs in when I can and being able to even share my experience with people here and on other social media platforms has been rough. I was just starting to get into the habit of sharing before I got my puppy. I just need to work on rebuilding the habit. That is taking a lot of conscious effort and again if I do not do it when I am thinking about it, I tend to forget and wish I had done it later. But I am also seeing the benefit of remembering and putting the effort in. It still feels weird and at times on here even though I am being very real with my experience I feel like I am complaining at times. But maybe that is just being real, that things are not all sunshine and rainbows.
The fact that I have been able to continue to make the progress as little as it is while navigating these different things is a victory in my eyes. I am someone who thinks we need to celebrate the small victories. With this mentality, I have also been motivated to continue on this journey and other ones like my languages. While I am still working on the actual habit of running, I was doing good before the new puppy. I feel that I took a few steps back after getting her but I have had victories getting back to focusing on these things. That is fuelling me to continue to push for being able to run a 5k even though I feel like I have even less time to devote to it. Though I am finding that I have more time than I think, that ever happen to anyone else? You think you are short on time but slowly you are finding you have time to do more than you think. I have also with this being able to see that there are other things that I need to work on even with the time.
Going forward in this goal and in general is going to be interesting because I very much feel like I have no idea what I am doing. Not just in how to push my goal but making sure I am giving all the time to all the areas that need my time. The actual running part is straightforward just progressing on the run walking I am increasing the running parts and then eventually phasing out the walking part. But the part of disciplining myself again with the habit is what I am currently working on is getting back into, if possible when I think of it do it. That was what was helping me the most to develop the habit and keep it off the back burner. Not making excuses and saying oh I will do it later or something like that.
Adding things to life like new members to your family can cause pauses or setbacks in goals that you are working toward. But that does not mean that you should stop or let them fall to the back burner forever if at all. It is not easy, and it takes time to find a balance to be able to push forward on them. You may have to take a few steps back because of the laps, I know in my running and language ability I have. So, it is just going to take more hard work to push forward and surpass where I was and on toward the completion of my goals. I have seen women who are mothers find the balance and be able to do it. I hope that they struggle as much as I feel and I am only a pet parent but the fact that they do find success is encouraging. I am not worried about how they do it, for what works for them may not work for me. I will find my way on the how but the fact they can do it is the important thing to me.
Lemons or Lemonade 