I have always been a big planner. I used to plan every minute of my life and most of the jobs I’ve had along my career were Planner or Coordinator roles. However, at that time in my life I used to have more-or-less full control over whether those plans were carried through or not.
Well not anymore I don’t! Now I have 5 beings hell bent on their own plan to do the exact opposite of what I have planned!!
I find that I hate planning things now - when nothing goes to my carefully curated plan I get so damn frustrated. But I can’t get on board with winging things either so I am in a conundrum. I find that anytime things don’t go to plan I get so upset and it takes me a long time to ‘recover’ at the moment. (That should go some way to tell you what level of burnout I’m at currently.) The frustration builds with every little thing that goes “wrong” that it almost seems like the better choice to NOT plan and that way at least the frustration won’t compound as much. A choice I never would have been seen making back in the day.
Friday was the perfect example - Ian was away so I decided on a movie night. Plan was to make and eat dinner early, drop/pick up Mason from football, movie with duvets & popcorn, kids to bed, maybe get some work done and finally watch the last episode of The Last of Us.
Everything went well, we were on time for everything with minimal stress… until movie time…
The older kids took forever to settle to watch.
Leo was tired but kept crying instead of sleeping.
Joey was tired and being rather violent in an effort keep himself awake.
Aimee wasn’t particularly into the movie so was winding the others up.
I got so irritated by the middle of the movie that I contemplated giving up and sending them all to bed. However, I knew that was just rash thinking and I stuck it out, though it was tough af. Leo eventually went to sleep, Joey settled when I gave him a hug and I got my iPad out to write this while they watched and slept.
The thing that intrigues me about this hang up of mine is this - I wouldn’t have felt any of the frustration and upset that came with this small setback had I NOT planned out the above steps or had an expectation set on something… If I hadn’t said to myself “This is the sequence of events” I know for a fact I wouldn’t have got as grumpy for a minute there!
Does anyone else have any idea what I mean?
As I hear it out loud, maybe my issue is not with the planning… maybe its the expectations I lay onto every step of said plan… I expected everyone else to be as exhausted as me by movie time, I expected them to all be interested in the same movie, I expected them to understand I needed peace which is MADNESS, why on Earth did I expect that, no matter how unwittingly I placed the expectation?! 😂
The good thing is I can laugh about this now and also reflect and see that maybe my planning ways will still serve me but that my focus should be to get a grip on my brain’s overzealous handing out of expectations for any given situation.
I can also look back and see this has been the case my entire life, I’ve always had an idea of how I want a situation to go, I can see it in my mind and play it out and when people go off script it really throws me. It’s only surfaced in this way now because I am shockingly bad at masking it now. I used to be a pro!
As always, if anything here resonates with you then you are not alone and I’m always here if you want to chat.
I’ve been told I am a good friend and I know when I am going through these tough times I needed a friend and mine were all too busy to help at the time. Motherhood is lonely af so please talk to someone you know. If that feels too much you can talk to someone you don’t know, no judgement -
@ginidunwell on Insta or
Leave a wee comment or ❤️ below and I’ll reach out.
Thank you for reading 🤎
Comments