How do we take care to not miss the most important parts of life? Scheduling time for my family and friends helps me a lot each day because this gives me guaranteed time to relax and helps me establish balance when it is SO TEMPTING to just work all day!
My Daily Expectations and Life Today
This post is part 2 of Scheduling Shame with part 1 available at https://steemit.com/life/@jerrybanfield/scheduling-shame. See inside this post what I do every day and how I schedule time with my daughter, a daily Alcoholic Anonymous meeting, hanging out with my wife and in-laws and walking the dogs.
Quality time spent with my daughter
That moves the sun to 2:30 to 3:30, where my wife likes to be able to do a little bit of work each day, although she doesn't wrap her entire ego around it like I do. She just enjoys a little break to go in and have some time to herself and do some work.
What I've started doing, I make a fruit and vegetable smoothie, which I have two 32 ounce cups that I have every day, which is about a significant portion of everything that I eat.
I also make the dogs oatmeal, peanut butter and beans.
"Holy crap, this guy is insane."
I cook my dogs homemade vegan dog food every day to see how long they'll live. I do the same thing for myself, I make a fruit and vegetable smoothie with approximately two to three pounds, that's a kilogram plus of fruit every day, and about the same amount of vegetables in it, plus then some things like ginger, turmeric and some spices, and an entire tub of spinach or kale or something like that. I hang out with my daughter in the kitchen right when I finish my work. I put family time in here because this is flexible.
Sometimes I do work, do something on my family, or spend extra time to go to the store with my daughter. Yesterday my daughter stuck her hand in the belt a little bit at the store, she got a little tiny blister out of it and she cried. I sat in the car and cried with her for 15 minutes afterward because all of that shame of cramming myself and hustling for my worthiness, as Brené Brown puts it, all of that crammed in just crashed in on me after she hurt her hand and cried in a store.
Her crying brought out all the crying I needed to do, and I just cried in the back seat of the car with her. I just sat there for like 10 or 15 minutes while she was eating her ice that she got in the store. That was my family time yesterday.
Daily Alcoholics Anonymous meeting
Then, I have an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting I go to every day, as I want to be there when that new guy walks off the street still hung over, just came out of rehab, and tell him what I've learned about being sober over the last three years, because this is why I still have a life today.
I went through my life poisoning my body, being frustrated with all these things in my mind and just figuring, "Look, I'll just have a drink or a couple, and then, at first, a couple of drinks take the edge off, relax a little bit, and then I won't have to look at or fix any of these other issues in my life. I'll just have a couple of drinks, then everything will be fine."
You wake up the next day and everything is less fine than it was before. This is the same thing when we take a medication. Alcohol's legal and you can go get it at the liquor store. Medication's legal too, you can go get it at the doctor.
If you take all this medication and alcohol all the time, you just take it to feel a little bit better and you wake up 10 years later realizing that you're killing yourself, that your life has continuously gotten worse, and all you've done is keep numbing and taking the edge off the pain to the point where even that's not working.
I go to Alcoholics Anonymous every day because my mind still thinks that drinking is a good idea. There's some part of me that would love to just drop what I'm doing, go get an Xbox, grab that zombies and fire up the vodka with the Diet Doctor Thunder, and just get wasted and not think about anything else.
That doesn't go away just because I'm sober. I have a world today that's much bigger. There are lots of other things in my world too. Still, if I take poor care of myself, if I cram so many expectations that I feel suffocated, then I'm just going to want to let the crazy out.
So, it's my responsibility today to live a life that's good, that I enjoy without getting drunk, without getting high, without going to the doctor and getting some kind of sedative, or pain pill or anti-depressant, or whatever the hell it is, that is supposed to fix a mental problem that's completely within my control, sober, to fix completely.
Being happy!
Now, with all the stuff I've said, I love my life. I have never been this happy ever. This is a better life than I had as a kid. I have a wonderful life today. I am happy 95% of the time I am awake. I'm so happy that people who aren't happy often can't even look at my face.
There was a girl yesterday I walked by and she looked at the guy in front of me. I was so damn happy and she just looked miserable. She turned her head around right when I walked by and it was awkward.
I'm used to it by now, but you’d look and be like, "What the hell was that?"
I am so happy that if you want to be miserable, you can't even look at my face. If you look at my face when I'm so happy and you're miserable, it will bring the crazy out. Like some people online who watch my videos and it just brings out all the curse words, it brings all the crazy out.
I have a wonderful life today. This is what my wonderful life looks like, and yet this is the biggest challenge I have as well.
Crazy expectations
My expectations are crazy. I expect that I should be able to just drop my work and be done with it. I don't need to check email, do messages or film anything, I don't have to do anything, I'm done.
This is five hours of work and I expect that five hours of work is enough every day. I expect that I should be able to go to my Alcoholics Anonymous meeting early. It's not a two hour meeting, it's an hour meeting, but I expect I should be able to arrive nice and early every day, no matter what's going on with my family.
If my daughter wants to play, I should still be able to get to my AA meeting early. I should be able to sit around and have time to talk to people. I shouldn't be fooling around on my phone either, because I look around and I think, "Well, why did you bother coming to the meeting early if you’re going to sit there on your phone the whole time?"
I think I should be able to just be there and show up, give everyone hugs and be happy every day, all that. Most of the time, I actually do this. Then by God, I come in five minutes late. Just like early sobriety again, walking in five minutes late. Are you just going to think about going to the liquor store after this too?
No, I expect that I should be able to stay late after every meeting as well. I expect I should be able to hang out if someone needs to talk about all the most shameful disgusting sinful things they've been through.
I should immediately be available to open my heart, not only to listen to all their stuff, but I should be available to tell all of my stuff too.
"Let me tell you about this sexual thing I did that was really weird. I did that a lot and I prayed to God to stop, and I just kept doing it anyway, and I couldn’t stop."
I should be able to just drop out all my secrets on demand, which I've put in all of them in my book that I could fit, but for some there was just no time. There are so many, 12 hours of videos, I crammed every single thing I could in there and held nothing back in my "Speaker Meeting 2017," which you can view here for free: https://u.jerrybanfield.com/courses/speakermeeting2017?coupon=steem
I expect to be ready on demand to open my heart up: "What do you need today? Okay, let's talk about this, all right." Then right after that, I expect, "All right, going to drop straight after the AA meeting."
Sometimes it's hard when you’ve opened up and heard about things, "I've never told anyone this before."
Sometimes it's hard to hear about stuff like that.
You hang out with your in-laws every day?
I expect that I should be able to walk straight in to my family, with my wife, daughter, mother-in-law, father-in-law, sister-in-law, and sometimes sister in law's husband. I should be able to roll straight in and immediately be 100% ready to hang out with my family in-laws.
Immediately, every day!
"God, you hang out with your in-laws every day?"
Yes, I have really good in-laws and my biological family, my mother, brother, and most of my other family don't live within 500 miles of me.
"300 miles, Jerry, don't exaggerate."
All right, 300 miles.
I don't have any biological family around, so I hang out with my wife and her family.
"Well, you could work."
Yes, I've experimented.
You want to talk about shame and feeling small and disgusting?
Oh, yes, go do an hour of work during family time. I uploaded a course the other night and I felt like crap afterwards.
"On your deathbed, are you going to wish you uploaded one more course to your website? Or are you going to wish you hung out with your wife and daughter?"
Well, tough choice it is. Tough choice, isn't it?
I expect that I should just be able to roll straight out of my AA meeting, no matter what happened, into family time. I should be able to fit all my chores in here as well. If I need to take the trash out, or wash some dishes, I should be able to do that too.
Walking the dogs
Every night from 8:30 to 9:30, I should be able to walk the dogs. Every single night, rain or shine, I've been out when it's been just drenched sometimes and the dogs would prefer I don't walk them.
So, if it's raining really bad, I just go out put on a coat and some sandals, and some earphones, so I can listen to a book underneath my coat, and I take it out with a flashlight and walk, even when it's pouring rain.
Sometimes if it looks like it's going to rain I’ll try to switch it up, but most nights I go out and walk my dogs.
Then, shower and reading time, and then bed.
I want to stay up five more minutes
I expect that I should be able to go to bed whenever my wife says so, every night.
Why?
Because it is good to go to bed with my wife. I've found our relationship is happier. I have found that if I start staying up on my own, then guess what?
I want to sleep in on my own as well. If I go to bed with my wife, then when our daughter yells, "Daddy," in the morning, I'm ready to get up, which would not be the case if I'd stayed up another hour or two reading a book.
I used to stay up playing video games late, but thankfully now, my office is in the bedroom and it doesn't work very well to play video games with my wife in bed in here. I'm so sure of that, that I haven't even tried it.
I expect as soon as my wife calls, "Bedtime," that I should be able to drop whatever book I'm reading, whether it's the Course in Miracles, the Brené Brown book, the Bible, the Koran, or whatever the heck it is that I'm reading.
I should be able to drop it, "Okay, yes, dear, we're going to bed right away."
Sometimes I get a little mad, "I want to stay up five more minutes. Yes, I want to stay up five more minutes, just five more minutes."
My wife asks, "What's wrong?"
I respond, "Nothing."
It's like when I pick my daughter up and say, "It is time for a diaper change."
She's like, "No, it's not time for a diaper change. It is time for me to ride my rocking horse, this is not time for a diaper change."
This is the biggest challenge I've been having in my life. This is a happy balanced life in my mind. This is seven days a week. I have lots of family time. I’m extremely grateful for my life like this today. I've gone to work 8, 10, 12 hours a day before, I’ve had a lot of different schedules. This is a really nice one.
Just because it's a really nice one, it might be tempting to say, "Well, you can take your nice schedule and shove it up your…"
You might be tempted to say, "Look how nice your life is. You can't possibly have anything that is difficult in it."
What’s difficult for me is the same thing that's difficult for everyone. I expect that I should be able to do it all. I should be able to look good doing it all with my hair styled up. I like it up and preppy, others have different opinions, I expect I should be available to help.
God, I have a lot of expectations on myself.
Now, it's healthy to have expectations on yourself. Some of the worst parts of my life, I didn't have many expectations.
"So, what if I get up at five in the afternoon with a god awful hangover, and then I start drinking at eight at night, and then do it all again? So what?"
Having expectations is good.
It's a delicate balance though.
As you can see, this is what I expect to do every day. Now, sure I can deviate from it, but it gets uncomfortable.
My wife asks, "Do you go to this party?
I ask, "What time is it?"
She answers, "Three."
Okay, that will count as family time. I can still get my work done and I have time for my meeting.
I am very grateful you've made it all the way to the end of this post with me.
We want to have the very happiest best lives possible, right?
That's why I'm here to share this with you.
I've run out of my allotted time!
This has been my biggest challenge lately. I realize this is a nice challenge to have, but at the same time, it hurts just as much as every other kind of challenge.
It does not hurt nearly as much as having a pounding headache from a hangover and feeling nauseous, dizzy, disgusting, shameful, and wondering what I did the night before.
No, it does not hurt nearly that much, but it does hurt very similar to most all of the other nice problems I've had.
I remember the nastiest worst most frustrating problems I've had today to help me have perspective that, "Yes, these are very luxurious problems to have," but yes, it hurts enough to break down and cry about it and lay down depressed for a few minutes.
I get through that, I pray about it, it passes and I'm happy again. I'm very happy to be here and share this with you now. I'm happy to see the humor in this, and how ridiculous some of these things are.
Well, it's about time to film and upload a course on the University of JerryBanfield and I've run out of my allotted time to film and upload a video to YouTube and Facebook, and I haven't even written the description out yet, or made a cover image, maybe I'll just do one automatically, whatever face that catches me in.
Thank you very much for reading this written version of Day 160 of Happier People Podcast.
It helps me to know that these are really worth doing, because my mind tries to talk to me, "No, don't bother talking about this stuff that makes you cry and makes you really feel ashamed every day. Why don't you go make some predictions about the Ethereum price? People are going to really like that."
Maybe that's helpful, maybe it gets likes, maybe it gets views, but what makes a powerful difference in the middle of your life?
This is the stuff that matters the most: How are you spending your time every day? How are you feeling about your day?
Thank you, I appreciate you.
I hope you have a wonderful day today.
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Love,
Jerry Banfield with edits by @gmichelbkk