Stalling...

When Brent travels I lounge in bed and read before I get up in the morning. I still wake up at the same time. I just don't get up. I read. I read Facebook, I read whatever book I'm currently in the middle of, I just read. I laze about. Then I eventually roll out of bed when the drive for coffee gets too strong to stay under the covers.

And I almost always regret it. The time we normally get up and get to the gym is a rarely crowded time. When I laze about it almost always is crowded. The parking lot is full because there are classes going on, the floor is full because everyone who doesn't have to be to work by 7 or 8 is there and because they aren't in a hurry to get to work they sort of meander through their workouts and, get this, CHAT with each other. I really do prefer getting my workout done before Brent goes to work. But still when he travels I laze about anyway.

I knew I need to fill the tank this week. I was creeping towards a quarter tank and I normally don't let it get that low. And especially when there is snow in the forecast (AGAIN). So I knew I needed gas but I kept pushing it off. I needed $25 more in groceries to reach 100 points which would give me the 10 cent discount. Which works out to about a $1 saved, by the way, so that's how ridiculous it is, but still, I waited until I had stopped at the grocery store yesterday to stock up on a few things to reach that magic mark. And then this morning I went to fill up and gas prices had gone up overnight. Of course they had, Spring Break is next week and so if I had thought about it I would have FOR SURE filled up on Wednesday. But I was being slow so I didn't. Good thing I had that extra 10 cent discount, ugh.

For my goal this month I am doing a compound recap goal. I talked about it earlier. But part of it is publishing 3 blogs a week. Which is not that many, y'all, not really. But because I have made it a need to do I've been slacking. Yesterday I had every intention of writing, because I had 3 days left in the week and two blogs to publish and Saturday is a busy chopped up time day so I won't have time to sit and write. So OBVIOUSLY I would sit down and write a blog yesterday and one today and it would be done. And as the day ticked away and I did a little of this, and a little of that, and zero writing I thought, well that leaves two for tomorrow, and oh yeah, one really needs to be fiction to keep up with my 52 fiction pieces for the year goal so...

It is such a weird thing. I love making a list and checking things off. I love ending the day knowing I've been super productive and done a lot of things. I love making a difference in a day. But I will spend a whole day reading random news articles or surfing odd TV shows or just daydreaming and have none of those things to show for it. Why do I do it?

Why do we all do it?

The number of things we do that are not in our own best interests. We know we should eat better than we do. We know we should be more physically active than we are. We know we should be nicer to people than we are. We know we should do more to help people that we do. We know that there are so many ways that we could make ourselves and the world around us better but we don't do them. Why is that?

The best things in life are rarely the easiest. We know that, right? But at the same time why would we want to struggle constantly? I mean I am always reframing things to make them enjoyable. My baseline is happy and I make pretty much everything a game to make sure I'm having fun. Even the goals and subgoals and minigoals and macrogoals are all just part of a giant game I'm playing to collect stars. But wouldn't it be great if we could figure out a way to stop self sabotaging, to stop skipping the things that are good for us, that are the best for us and just do our best all of the time?

I have no idea how to actually do that, or if I even want to, because the truth is, I love laying around in bed reading a book. I love easing in to the day. I love staring out the window daydreaming. And who knows, if I gave all of those things up I might turn into a giant super motivated stress ball who was accomplishing a lot but having no fun at all doing it. Maybe it's the balance that is important. Maybe all of the shoulds aren't as important as we think they are. My friend Megan says, "Don't should on me and I won't should on you."

I don't know what the actual balance is between doing only things that are good for us and productive and doing things that are maybe not so good for us but feed our souls and recharge our batteries. But what I do know is that this totally counts as one of the two blogs I need to write today.

(Insert big cheesy grin here)