Keeping it Balanced.

Yesterday I had a breakdown. Not ashamed to admit it but I was ready to never again leave my house and be known only as the crazy dog lady who doesn't come out in the daytime.

You see for the past however many years I have been teaching people on average of four nights a week. That's from 6pm-9pm almost every night. On top of that I work a regular job, and do rescue, and have my own four dogs, plus the odd rescue or extra dog. That's a lot of stuff. I am used to a lot of stuff- in fact I love being busy. But I think that yesterday was a pretty good indication that things are not okay.
Yesterday I felt so overwhelmed by everything I couldn't breathe. My head was spinning, and I felt a little crazier than normal. Not good. Interestingly enough there wasn't one thing that set it off. I got home from class and it was just this weird thing. Creepy. And a little crazy.

One of my new years resolutions was to only do what is best for me and my dogs. I started today.

With the help of two great friends (you know who you are) I figured out some stuff. We went through each of the "extra" things I do to see what could be dropped, even temporarily. I thought about how much each thing meant to me (and what they paid $ vs. what they cost mentally). With only a little hesitation I dropped two nights! One right away, and the other after this set of classes. And I cut another night in half- only doing one class instead of two. Although the loss of income might be a little scary- keeping life balanced is a little more important.

This has happened before, and I've said that I will make changes and never followed through. But the difference this time it that I feel good about my decision. More time at home with the dogs, and more time to just learn to relax. I don't know how to do nothing. It's strange, but even to sit through a movie is pretty painful sometimes. So I will have to learn. Jo suggested that I start doing puzzles. I laughed out loud.

I am also cutting back on rescue until I return to sanity. :) No more intakes until things have settled. Which is a good thing- we have our hands full with a few long term/hard to adopt dogs.

And the reason I publicly admit that I am a little crazy? So that I can look back on this blog post and see that there is a reason I am poor, and sitting at home being bored.

And because I can, and it's one of my new all time fav songs.