50th Birthday Hullabaloo

This weekend is my husband's 50th birthday.

It’s a weekend long thing. There’s gatherings. There’s activities. There’s out of state visitors. There’s a ton of shit to do.

I’m exhausted already. I enjoy none of these things.

He is a social butterfly and I’m a hermit. (Leo/Aquarius)

All of the things going on for his birthday weekend including all the extra chores I have to do to make things run smoothly, make me very short tempered.

What am I doing to help make sure I don’t either blow my top or become so energetically drained I stay in bed for a month?

Protecting the shit out of my quiet mornings. I naturally wake up between 4-6am. I have my coffee. Get some work done. Be a little vegetable. All while everyone else in the house is still asleep. Like Harry Potter sitting in his room pretending he doesn’t exist.

Energy work. Grounding. Refueling. Recharging. Ditching anything that’s not mine.

Delegating. Our children are grown adults. I don’t have to do all the things myself. I’m used to doing all the things myself so I’m not always great at letting other people help. But I let other people help and I let them help imperfectly. (Lesson learned from watching a friend totally destroy her life micro managing her partner & kids, and becoming a drug addict.)

Giving up on perfect. Nothing will be up to my standards. No matter how much I clean the house, it will still be an old rotting pile. No matter how much effort I put in to making things run smoothly, someone is going to act like an asshole at some point. Something will happen that will annoy the ever loving shit out of me. The sun will be too hot. There won’t be enough food. I’ll run out of something. I have to let that shit go & be ok with it. Because none of it will ruin my husband's birthday because he will have fun anyway. That is the sort of person he is. And it’s his party.

Pre-resting. This last week I’ve been spending my evenings binge watching TV. Laying in bed, eating popcorn, devouring one Kdrama/Cdrama or comedy after another. It looks like being lazy. It feels like being lazy. I’m storing up energy. I’m energetically pre-gaming.

Listening to music. Music that I love. That lights me up. Gives me energy. Which I love a wide variety of music, but I do listen to a lot of metal. The screams give me joy. Sometimes I’m blaring it over speakers. Sometimes it lives in my noise canceling headphones. I love good bass and I just got some Skullcandy headphones that let you feel the bass in your bones. So good.

Stay connected with my creativity. I’m working on my fiction writing. I writing in my journal. I might doodle or check in with my knitting. Something. Anything. It doesn’t have to be big. It doesn’t have to be finishing a project or getting out art supplies to work on something. Snapping a photo of some thing that caught my eye with my phone. Whatever.

These are the things that help keep me sane during things that stress me out. It’s important that you know what your list of things are. So that you can implement them when you need them. If you aren’t sure, test out some of the things from my list. Tweak them and make them your own.

Enjoy your weekend. I’ll see you on the other side.