Too long...

Well, it's been a long dang time since I've posted.  A friend is putting together a blog carnival, and I respect her a lot.  Her topic, which I'll keep under wraps until she puts the word out about it, made my mind start turning again in a blogging sort of way.

It's not that I don't like to blog.  I love to write, I love to share my opinion and advice, which I always hope people will find helpful.  I also hope people will share their views of my advice with me to make it even more helpful.  So why don't I blog very much?  Well...it's not that I don't have time.  I do.  I don't like it when people say they don't have the time.  Maybe they do, maybe they don't, but it's such a general excuse.  I just don't make it a priority.  I'm in charge of all of my priorities.  I make my decisions as best I can to fall in line with my priorities.  And there just happen to be other things that I put ahead of blogging.

One of these things sucks my brain right out of my body.  It's called "watching TV", and you may have heard of it.  Now, if I were left to my own devices completely, I probably wouldn't even own a TV.  But my partner watches TV and enjoys it, I choose to spend time with him in a way that he enjoys, and that means I watch TV with him.  Only we react to TV in completely different ways.  First, he can do something I have never been able to do--fall asleep while watching it.  I get sucked in.  I have to know how something ends.  I bite my nails, I sit on the edge of my seat, I have my unfinished project sitting in my lap and my laptop close by for those intense moments when my heart is beating so hard I'm SURE my partner could not possibly fall asleep because it'd be disturbing him so much.  But no, there he is, snoring.  Which leads me to the other way in which we react differently--commercials.  I get so fired up over, and I hate to use this word, STUPID commercials, that I become an irate, nonsensical, stuttering fool, picking apart the commercials (which I call, in the moment, advertisements), speaking loudly and intensely about how asinine they are.  Luckily we have a DVR and I can fast-forward through many commercials in the grand scheme of our TV watching, but sheesh!!!!  Ugh!  And there is he is, snoring, not giving a lick about the crazy ways we are trying to be persuaded to buy...a car.  Or toilet paper.  Or toilet scrubber.  Those are even better, because apparently you can get toilets to basically scrub themselves.  AGH!!  I shouldn't start...

So why have I made this a priority?  I tell myself it's so I can spend quality time with my partner.  This is not quality time.  It's stressful.  My sleep suffers for it because I replay all of the intense stuff, the suspenseful stuff, the moronic commercials in my head over and over and over... and over.  And over.  I try not to.  I meditate, but end up re-focusing on TV.  I tap (EFT), but go off on tangents.  I drink water.  I count.  I do the dead man's yoga pose.  I say my intentions for the night over and over in my head, but the TV stuff creeps in and disturbs my...intentions.  Ha ha!!  Not funny.

So I need to re-think things, but that would require...time.  And what's my lame excuse for not just sitting down and thinking about this?  Well, I just don't have enough time.  :)  So here's my plan.  I want to convince him that TV is not getting us anywhere, that it's a waste of money, that we're losing valuable sleep over it, that we could be doing other things that are more productive or bonding or fun or whatever.   He thinks I'm silly for getting so worked up about TV.  Am I?  I can't even tell anymore.

Since my son Dragon was born (he was born first day of summer and I credit him with bringing to the Pacific Northwest the gorgeous summer we had starting pretty much on that date), I've had so much time I'm not even used to it.  All at once (after that initial healing time, of course) it seems, my kids have been sleeping through the night, my life got bigger in love, but more simple and sweet at the same time.  I do less, I've slowed down.  Dragon actually sleeps.  He knows how, he sleeps for good chunks of time, and the evening (from about 7pm until at least 10pm) is one of those times.  I have finished projects, I have started more projects to finish, I have re-arranged, sold stuff on craigslist, cleaned stuff out, picked stuff up...pretty much, I've gotten into a good routine.  Not a rut, but a routine--except for the TV thing.  It's become a sort of horrible comfort zone, and I've GOT to get out of it, because I really feel like my brain is being sucked right out of my head.

And with that, I'm going to finish crocheting the strap for this bag I'm making for a holiday present, and start the next bag.  I'm not turning on the TV.  :)