Over Scheduled

I’ve been doing some good stuff this month – none of which I’ve blogged about because I’ve been having too much fun AND I’ve been stressed AND I never finished blogging about my California trip last month! It seems like so long ago now. I have several more California drafts started, so maybe I can plow through those and then get a start on September – before it’s October. I need to stop doing fun stuff until I have time to catch up!

I got overly stressed out for a week or two recently, so now I’m in middle of the difficult task of trying to figure out what to cut out. It’s all about balance! Travel in particular is stressful for me. I like being places. I just find it very nerve wracking getting there and back. In addition to my California trip, John and I have been doing road trips every weekend. Plus social events, which is great because we are trying to make local friends.

Getting the social balance finely tuned is a challenge. Ideally I like to hang out with one or two other people at a time. But I find that the best way to make friends is to join groups. Therefore, I’m currently attending several group events, and I even run one myself. I started a Meet-up group and I schedule local live music events, ideally with dancing.

My purpose for starting the Meet-up group is to meet other women to go dancing with, because John doesn’t like to dancing (the freestyle kind of dancing I do doesn’t require partners, luckily). So all I need is a friend or small group of friends to go with. I don’t actually like running the Meet-up group. It’s a big pain the butt, frankly. My plan is to give it a year, with the goal of having some dancing friends at the end of the year. I started the group in March or April, so I am going to keep at it going through the winter. Let’s see if I come out of this experiment with some friends to go dancing with!

Between all the things I’ve been trying, I’ve been going to too many events lately. As soon as I got back from California, I went out every night for 4 nights straight. That’s too much! Also several things have come up recently that I hadn’t counted on. Because life is like that!

I really just want to do it all! Huh, funny, but I can’t. It’s like sticking to a budget but with fuzzier data. With a financial budget you can at least see how much you have, so the only guesswork is related to unexpected expenses. Personal energy budgets are harder. Not only are there unexpected energy sinks, you don’t know how much you’re starting with. Imagine trying to stick to your financial budget when random days you have more money in your checking account than other days. The only way to handle that much uncertainty in my personal energy budget (if occasional crashing isn’t an option) is to leave a large cushion. That means limiting myself to less every day than I could actually happily do on most days. Well, darn!

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Life Coaching for Neurodiverse Professionals