I just don't feel like it

Some days I just don't feel like doing things.

This morning, I didn't want to get up (nothing remotely new there).  I didn't want to face my to-do list for the day or the worries I've got hanging over me about various things. I didn't want to do 5 heads of hair and deal with the inevitable chaos of getting 5 kids off to school. But I plowed through. I got up and got the kids to school.

Now I'm sitting at my computer having dealt with the most urgent emails that popped up overnight and I need to go running.  I really need to. I've got my running clothes on. It'll make me feel so much better about my life. But it's sort of cold out there and I'm bored with my route and my music. So here I am blogging instead.

I was talking to a friend the other day about how decisions often cause stress and that when we narrow our decisions, we often lessen our stress.  We live in a world of SO many decisions - many of them liberating and wonderful - but many of them taking up precious time and space in our brains.  Which of the 100 different kinds of toothpaste should I buy at Walmart? (dealt with this one yesterday - they keep coming out with new stuff and then I don't know whether to go with what I always buy or get something new or on sale and I spend way too much time trying to figure it out while the kids are going a bit crazy...) What should I make for dinner?  What should I wear?  What lessons should my kids be taking? When should I go running - should I do my computer work before or after?

As we talked, I realized that I need to limit decisions for myself just like I often limit them for my children ("you can have a lot or a little of what we're having for dinner but you have to eat it...").  I need to have "shopping rules" to keep from wasting time in the toothpaste aisle - I should get what I always get or look at the toothpaste for 2 minutes and then get the one that seems best rather than looking so carefully at prices and the qualities of different options.  I need to plan out my dinner menus once a week - plan the work and work the plan - this way I'm not trying to make decisions about what to make during homework crunch time.  I need to sit down with my kids and lay out the possibilities and limitations and pros and cons of a limited number of different lessons and activities for the school year and make some decisions rather than having these decisions hang over my head.

And I need to have a set times and days that I go running so I don't have to keep making decisions about how and when to fit it in.  It's not a decision whether I go running.  I know I need that and I go 3 times a week - but exactly when I go has become a silly repetitive decision process. Now that my kids are all in school and I can go at different times, I've been too flexible.

Enough!  I'm going running.  Right now.  And I'm going to go the minute the kids leave for school from now on. No more decisions about running every day.