Natural Supports

You call me a ‘natural support’.  And yes, I quite naturally adore my daughter.  We are bonded.  She appreciates me, asks for me, and depends on me. And it’s reciprocal.

And there is absolutely nothing natural about the fact I am literally -always- on call and the default when other care disappoints my daughter, or how you believed I could do this for free for 18 years, when everything my daughter and I need from stable housing to useful goods to put in the house, and transportation and medical care cost money.

There is nothing natural about one person, or even two parents being responsible for 4.2 times  an ordinary forty-hour work load, especially if you are unwilling to pay for the hours(or even 2.25, such as the amount my daughter is awake and regularly needing attention). Nothing natural about my taking on administrative and managerial duties without acknowledgement.

There is nothing natural about my finding no access when I expressed needs for rest, for stability and long term savings, for medical care, etc.…

There is nothing natural about your dependence on me for my daughter’s care, without your giving to me in equal exchange.  

There is nothing natural about your requirement of reams of paperwork and hours of phone calls or meetings for any and each single item you may be grudgingly willing to provide for my daughter and I.  

There is nothing natural about your perfect willingness to pay administrators to scour that paperwork for any reason to deny my daughter something, paying your gate-keepers more than the potential actual goods and services they guard, more than anyone who is actually spending significant time providing direct care and things my daughter needs. There is nothing natural about denials due to minor errors or omissions in how the paperwork is completed, or not knowing the correct code-words, or what is potentially available if I ask the right way.  

There is nothing natural about systems that you built to shut me out, shut me up and separate me along with my daughter from the general population, because we lacked access to necessary resources.  There is nothing natural about exclusion from pay, exclusion from social life, and super-human demands.  There is nothing natural about your messages which have literally told me I ought to be invisible.  I am a real flesh and blood person, too.  I am not a fairy that magically provides all my daughter’s needs at no cost or effort.  I am not a piece of machinery that never can break down.  I am one human being, naturally limited, naturally in need of my own consistent support.  Key word: consistent.

How to Avoid Procrastination

I keep hearing people really beat up on themselves for “procrastination” or “not getting enough done”. If that’s you, would you reflect on the chart in this article for a minute, please?: US workers’ productivity And that doesn’t even include a lot of our caregiving and passion work, either, especially for women! women’s unpaid Labor Is it possible to give yourself credit and kudos for what you already do? Have you told someone else today how much you appreciate their work?

1)Are you really procrastinating, or are you already doing the very most productive thing you can by giving yourself much needed rest? First thing, check whether all your biological needs are met, particularly for sleep and rest.

2)Learn and use David Allen’s Getting Things Done methods. I  really love the todoist app, which can be free, for my recording and sorting of tasks.

3)Write a stream of consciousness journal for 15 minutes daily. This is about the moment and the conversations you will have with yourself.  Go for it! It is -not- about a finished product.  You need not and probably will not share the result with anyone.  I usually use a legal pad and shred mine right after writing.  If all you can think is “I see a white wall”, just write that over and over and over until you think of something else or your fifteen minutes run out.

4)Are you procrastinating because the goal you described isn’t actually what you want to achieve?  Is something else a bigger focus?  Be comfortable changing direction.  Trust that your new direction is the best fit for you and your energies.

5)Make yourself accountable to others.  Meet regularly with several people who are invested in your goals.  So…this puts potential breaks on step #4. Your car needs steering, acceleration and brakes, right?! Sometimes you slow way down, especially around a sharp corner.

6)Fill your calendar with the right amount of specifically scheduled events with others.  Too many back to back appointments can be overwhelming, leading to neglecting the biological needs, stress and no time to independently -do- tasks. Too few appointments can lead to a lack of energy and motivation, isolation, and the sense of unlimited time in which to do all the things “later” (and we all know how that goes).

7)Take movement breaks.  Physically move your body at least 5 minutes every hour.  

8)Track your progress.  Whatever it is that is important to you, find a way to measure it. Review the data at regular intervals. Todoist has a handy productivity tracker, which is simply the number of tasks you have completed.