I’m happy to report that I’m no longer M.I.A. from this blog. It’s been a long while – or it felt like it anyway – but I’m back. Just as I was getting into a groove of posting regularly, I was felled by the flu for most of a week in January. Okay, that’s being a touch overly dramatic but you get my drift. It was an evil, evil snowball of events after that leads to where I am now… My work/life balance is waaaaay out of whack. Working too much, paying too little attention to the rest of my life (just ask my husband!). Even when I am home I’m too tired to want to do much of anything. So my goal in the next few weeks is to get back on track. First, I want to start getting up at 6:00 every day. Some days I’ll go to the gym and other days I’ll to work early. Second, I want to leave work on time. 5:30 on normal days, 4:30 on the days I go in early.
I find that one of the first things to go when I get out of balance like this is my sense of fun and joy. I try to create it or find little pockets of it by being goofy but that can get obnoxious (just ask my husband!) and doesn’t really give me a sense of true joy or fun. When I get like this and people ask “how are you?” I usually answer with a flip “I’m still standing!” or “I’m still here – better than the alternative.” Umm, negativity much? So I’m not Christian and I don’t celebrate Easter – or, by extension, Lent – but this year I’m trying out the whole giving-something-up-for-Lent thing. In addition to the aforementioned attempts at finding balance, I’m giving up negativity. More accurately, I’m going to work on being more positive – see the good around me instead of the bad, the frustrating, or the aggravating. I will appreciate my husband more and pick at him less. I will enjoy the sunny days we have (even if they’re cold) and grumble less about it still being winter. I will be grateful I have a job where I learn new and interesting things every day and complain & worry about the workload less. I doubt I’ll ever be one of those people that is so damn perky you just don’t know how they do it, but – damn it! – I can aspire to it! 
