Motivation, Where Art Thou?

The hardest thing about everything for me is motivation. There are twenty four hours in a day, I sleep for about eight of them, spend an hour commuting to and from work, and spend nine hours a day at work. That leaves me about six hours a day to myself, at least half an hour of which I spend getting ready for work. Then you add in making sure the dogs are fed, have their medicine if needed, and making sure I get dinner (which nine times out of ten the husband does) and that leaves me with about five hours. Five hours a day to do something for me.

Remember when we were kids, and our parents made us clean our room, and it was the worst thing ever because it took up so much of our lives to do? If all I had to do these days was clean my room, my room would be clean. I really was right when I was a nine year old on the playground thinking that third grade was as good as it gets.

...there was a little girl who thought being an adult would suck, and she was right.

 

 

In these five hours that I have to myself I usually try to write because that's my thing that gets me through the day- it's cathartic and creative and something that I enjoy doing more than most anything else- but there are days when my muse is on vacation and I literally sit there staring at my computer screen waiting for something to happen. Usually at some point during those five hours I'll exercise, and the hubby usually does that with me, so we get some together time there. I'm a big fan of multi-tasking.

Here's where motivation really comes in to play for me, though. I've been known to sit on my butt for four hours on Facebook doing nothing when there is a list of about 1,138 things I'd rather be doing that I'm just not motivated to do. Like the dishes. Or cleaning the bathroom. Or laundry. Or playing a video game. Or reading. And some of those things aren't actually things I want to be doing, but they are things I know I should be doing. It goes back to that being an adult and how so not fun it can be. One of the nice things about being an adult, though, is that if I feel like slacking on stuff like laundry and dishes, I can. Oh, and now I get all the naughty jokes from Animaniacs, too.

 

 



Seriously, how did they get away with this?

 



But when it comes to diabetes, if I'm not motivated to do what I'm supposed to, that ends up in the realm of very bad things. For a long time I wasn't motivated to take care of myself the way I should have. I was bulimic in high school, but I wasn't sticking my finger down my throat. No, I was purposefully not giving myself insulin so I could eat what I wanted and still stay skinny. Too skinny as a matter of fact. For a while after I got on the pump I was pushing 200 lbs. because I ate whatever I wanted and didn't exercise a lick. It really took me wanting to get in shape before I started to closely monitor what I was eating and how much I was exerising and find a balance. It didn't matter how many times my mom brought my weight up, or how often I dodged cameras because I always hated how I looked in pictures, and it certainly didn't matter that I knew I'd not only feel better about myself and be in better control of my diabtetes if I took care of myself. I knew what I needed to do, but I had no motivation to do it.

 

What finally motivated me? Wanting to have kids helped. Wanting to set a good example so my husband would be healthy, too, has helped. Going to Disneyland and seeing how unhealthy so many of the people around us were helped. It was a lot of things, actually, that added up to me finally finding the motivation to make my health a prioirity. And while I slack some days, and don't always get off my butt and exercise when I should, I am more motivated than not, and that's a good thing.

 

 Now if I could just get motivated to fold the mountain of laundry on the spare bed...