H just moved out, 13 months post-bomb

[Dawn of Hope]

Hi, Mishka, thanks for posting and for the suggestion about the book. That gave me an idea for a modification to that which might give me the incentive I need--I will try it and see how it goes. I did get to bed slightly earlier last night...only about 45 minutes earlier than the earliest I have been doing lately, but if I can make it a trend, I won't complain about the tiny steps. Someone I know was used to staying up until 3 a.m. after doing that for years and years, and then she married someone who was in bed by 10 or 11 every night, so she worked at it 15 minutes at a time. She said it took her 6 months to make the transition complete. My sleep patterns are so erratic, it's difficult to know if I'm improving. One night I'll go to bed at 3 a.m., the next at 6 a.m., then maybe 4 a.m., then 8 a.m. What a mess. I guess it's both good and bad that I don't usually have to be up at a particular time--good in that I can still usually get enough sleep, but bad in that I'm not *forced* into a more normal schedule by exhaustion. <sigh> Any other suggestions would be welcome. This has been going on way too long. The only time in the last 20 years that I had a handle on this was for a few months after the bomb, but then I started slipping again, and lately I've been as bad as ever.

I got a lot of procrastinated things off my plate today, so I'm pretty pleased about that. I called the student loan company to find out if there is any possibility I might be under any obligation regarding payment on the student loan that H cosigned for OW (which I'm sure I wasn't supposed to know about in the first place and have not discussed with him). Fortunately, they told me I don't have anything to worry about there. I also did a couple of things that needed doing to prepare for the class I start teaching in two days (still a few more to do, but I'm getting there).

Ordered a copy of my credit report, which is free since I just got rejected when applying for a credit card. Not sure if I talked about this before or not...at the end of December, I applied for a card in my own name only so that I could start establishing credit independent of H, since we have pretty much gone the joint route on everything financial...I was rejected because I'm still on all of our joint credit cards (even though I almost never use them, and H is responsible for the payments on them), so between the debt levels on those cards, and my low income, my debt-to-income ratio is too high, because H's income isn't being figured into the mix, but the debt he has run up IS. Soooo...my debt ratio is something like 116%, and they like it to be no more than 35%. So I will have to do something more drastic before I can set that up, but in the meantime I can at least see about cleaning up my credit wherever I can.

Anyone else have the problem of never feeling like you've done enough, even just for the moment? I mean in a general sense, not specific to your M or anything else. No matter how much I do, or how good it is, or how hard I work, even when I've done a lot and am patting myself on the back for it, I still have this feeling that it's not enough. Even on those rare occasions when I feel pretty good about something I've done, that "not enough" feeling is there, even if I don't want to acknowledge it and have pushed it into a closet. Hmmm...no wonder I have so much trouble getting started on anything or making any changes! If it's never going to be enough, or "good enough," why bother at all? I've had this insight before, but every time you look at something like this about yourself, you go a little deeper with it, and hopefully are able to make better use of it.

Sometimes I think I am wearing myself out, thinking too much. Of course, if I spent half as much energy getting things done as I do procrastinating about them, I wouldn't have much left to procrastinate about!

Hmmmm. Guess I'll go see what else I can get myself to get done today.

Peace,
Dawn