the edit: on control and balance

February 18, 2015

keepgoingSo I penned this post last night after dealing with the site having been hacked for a large portion of the day. I spent most of yesterday feeling utterly useless. Dumb, frustrated and useless, if I’m being honest. (I’ve started to go through your answers from THIS and more personal posts was on of the biggest asks…so here goes…!)

 

If you have a website or blog, you may know the feeling but once I realized my site was hacked and determined what needed to be done to have it fixed (*says a prayer, crosses fingers*) I suddenly realized how much I take for granted the fact that this site runs (generally) on its own. I pay for my domain, I pay for my hosting, my brother troubleshoots for me every once in a while, I deal with spam comments day in and day out…but that’s pretty much been the worst of it in eight (yes, 8) years. Which kind of put everything in perspective for me.

 

That being said, it didn’t stop from me feeling that, once I started digging, it was like an Alice-in-Wonderland down a rabbit hole scenario. I was utterly spinning and fighting tears. When I had exhausted all that I, personally, could do (and hired someone to try and rectify the situation with malware scans and shutting my site down for 24 hours to try and clean it) I moped and tried to cure my feelings of failure with several episodes of Gilmore Girls. But you know what? All it did was compound my feelings of uselessness. I was laying in bed feeling sorry for myself and just kept thinking about why I wasn’t better at coding, or knowing how to determine malicious files (and wipe them) and then I started getting angry at the 4 technicians who weren’t helpful before the one that finally was. I was so pi$$ed angry about the tailspin they had put me in.

 

So once my anxiety had turned into sadness and then a serious form of rage…I decided to step away from my iPad and do something I could control. I got up, I turned on a favorite Pandora station very loudly (60s oldies – seriously – it is a serious mood improver) and I cleaned the hell out of my apartment. I did dishes, cleared stacks of magazines, put away every article of clothing, cleaned out purses, put away shoes, organized my jewelry…you name it, I did it (I also managed to knock down a hook previously nailed into a wall playing home to several purses…but hey, you can’t win them all.)

Staypatient

 

You see…due to some pretty serious anxiety brought on work-related stress the past few months, I’ve been struggling to find control and balance of late. But through this anxiety, what I’ve working on is reminding myself of the following important rules:

 

1. We can only do so much- sometimes we have to let go of control in order to put things back in balance.
2. Deep breaths are crucial.
3. We are all given the same hours in the day. It is up to us on how we use them.
4. Sometimes stopping work lets you be improve. Take a walk, take a night off…take time to just think and stop “doing” till you’re ready to
5. Busy is a choice. So is balance. Choose a mix of both.
6. When you feel out of control, seize small opportunities that let you feel accomplished.

 

All of the above take practice, of course. And there will be bad days. February 17th = bad day for me and this blog. It included site hacking, work stress, broken hooks, spotty cable and disappointing food delivery. And you want to know what I’m really good at? Snowballing things till it quite literally seems like I’m in the middle of my own version of The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. And nobody likes being around the person who can’t stop talking about how nothing was going right.

 

So I’m working on not snowballing. On seeking balance when I can’t be 100% in control. It’s not really in my nature to be a “go with the flow” kind of person (anyone else admittedly like this?) but I am so glad to be working on acknowledging the areas I need to grow in and continue to improve upon.

 

And for me? That’s worthwhile enough. For now…

 

p.s. if you can relate to any of the above, I love an exercise my mom gave me back in college on days that do seem really like the worst. You find 3 things that were good things that happened that day. They can honestly be the smallest things like if someone gave you a seat on the subway, you got a card in the mail or someone said “thank you” when you held a door open. But once you start to identify “the good” in a day, at the end of the day you tell someone else what good you identified. Sound off the 3 things. The amazing part? Your day seems so much better after talking about and recognizing the good around you. <3

 

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comments +

  1. Shannon says:

    You know you are stressed when one of your students gives you a gift bag of stress relief body products! Soon we can distress together. Luv ya!

  2. Laura says:

    Sending you lots of good vibes and de-stressing thoughts! I hope that things are fixed and back to normal soon! As someone who just dealt with a “system disruption” at work {thank you very much North Korea} I know how frustrating and helpless it can make you feel.

    Love the exercise your mom gave you! It’s similar to the “Glad Game” from the movie Pollyanna {I’m dating myself} that my mom used to have me play until I had a smile on my face. You keep listing thing you are glad for until you forget why you were unhappy in the first place.

    Good luck!

    Laura | Surf & Hydrangeas

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