How is it SUPPOSED to work?

[grebjack]

Time to report out on my week of spontaneity:

Rather... your thoughts more went to relationships and trust... very cool... also though, you do have certain expectations of where that money might end up... the good it might do someone... These are the things you can ponder on... what more can you infer about yourself and how you conduct yourself...

I think what I know about myself from the monetary challenge is that I have few worries about being able to pay for my necessities, and I've been broke enough in the past to know that everything else is, well, not necessary. I also think it shows that I'm a bit of a control freak, since I didn't just drop it anywhere, I was trying to up the odds that it would go to someone I would have wanted to give it to had I just controlled it completely. And I suppose it reaffirms my sense of myself as someone who pays attention to poverty and "the least of these."

The time challenge leaves me with a much less positive view.

interpretation of a challenge is often as important as participating in the challenge, itself... Notice... even while you are negotiating the challenge, you want to ensure you are doing it "right". As you did with the money challenge...

When I'm out to take a walk just to take a walk, I don't need directions, 'cause I don't really care where I'm going and it's no crisis if I get lost and I end up walking for a long time. On the other hand, if my car runs out of gas on a cold rainy night, I want clear directions to the nearest gas station, 'cause now I'm suffering an unpleasant experience for the sake of reaching a specific goal. I really don't understand where this challenge is supposed to take me, and it was really uncomfortable for me while I was in it, so I'd like to know that what I'm doing is going to serve the purpose of taking the challenge on. I suppose that's partly a concern about what you expect from me - you are the one person on these boards who is taking the time to respond to me, and I appreciate that. That said, I know I did a lousy job of keeping to the directive that I not make plans in advance.

In fact, I made a lot more social plans than usual. Sunday by email, L and V and I made plans to go out to dinner Tuesday night - we'd been trying to get together for weeks, but L's daughter got sick and then V's husband made conflicting plans - suddenly everyone was free and I couldn't bear to pass it up. Then Tuesday, my former student S stopped by as I was on my way out the door to dinner, so I agreed to meet him over lunch on Friday. Then I heard about the new Muppet movie, and my (6-foot-tall, 42-year-old) husband still likes the Muppets, so I asked him if he'd go see the movie with me, and he agreed to that and to having dinner afterward, which essentially "booked" the entire second half of the day, by the time I rented a car and drove to his part of the state, did movie and dinner, and got back home. I wasn't social Saturday, but I did partially build my day around the holiday hours at the rental car place and the pharmacy. Today, figuring I'd already totally blown that part of the challenge, I went ahead and went to church as usual.

Ultimately, the goal is spontaneity and focused on you and your personal time.

That still left me quite a lot of time to be "spontaneous" since I only worked two of the seven days. I was surprised that the decision to blow off work Monday night got me in trouble - a parent actually called my assistant principal to complain that I hadn't returned her call! I was also surprised that I didn't spend any of the stretches of alone time being catatonic - clearly I can last longer than 36 hours. I did sleep a lot. I played a lot of solitaire on my computer. My body got restless from being so still, so I did my chiropractor-assigned back workout on the usual days. Except for when I was out with other people, I didn't eat (I really think I didn't consume any food at all on Wednesday). It was never what I felt like doing, so I didn't do it, but I think the low blood sugar may explain the enormous amount of time I spent sleeping. I played with my cats some. I read some. I posted on DivorceBusting a little bit yesterday. I did some laundry. I finally put away my tomato cages. I think that's it. I kind of regret that a whole week of my life has passed. I guess I feel good about having learned how to discipline myself to accomplish things I want to do, since obviously my nature is to be a lazy bump on a log. I recall that when my husband first moved out, somebody told me my behavior was classic clinical depression (I sat around and cried and didn't eat and didn't do anything else) and I needed to just make myself keep moving. Now I'm thinking that setting goals for my time is an adaptation I made then, but I don't remember for sure.