Adjust.

Two things happened today that tested me. Firstly, I had to cancel my birthday party because of the delay to lifting restrictions. It’s not a big deal, in the grand scheme of things, and it’s definitely a first world problem, but I was sad about it. Secondly, my husband left at 10am and said he’d be back in a couple of hours. He took the car. He didn’t get back until 3pm and hadn’t answered the phone when I tried to call him.

My first instinct was to be pissed about both things but on some level I knew that I was overreacting, that I was behaving badly, or spoiled. I knew there was nothing that could be done about covid and I knew that Jimmy could do what he likes so why was I so mad? In the olden days I would ask myself this question but never take the time to really try to answer it.

Now though, I’ve learned to take the goddamn time and here’s what I’ve come to understand.

I’m not mad about the actual thing I think I’m mad about. In fact, I’m not even really mad. What I’m actually feeling is anxiety. I’m anxious that the plans have changed. I’m anxious that what I thought was going to happen, isn’t going to happen anymore. I’m anxious because I’m out of control: I can’t make Covid go away so that I can party with my loved ones and I can’t get hold of Jimmy to find out what’s going on.

If I’d known ahead of time that both these things were going to happen, I would have been fine about it. It wouldn’t have bothered me. In fact, I would have been delighted to be home by myself all day. So, instead of losing my shit, now…I take a minute to adjust.

I consciously stop and say, “Ok, so what I wanted to be able to do isn't possible anymore. That’s ok. No one has done anything wrong, I just need to adjust my expectations of what my birthday is going to look like and adjust my expectations of what my day today looks like and work with the new plan. I need to give myself a few conscious minutes to do that and then I can get on with bossing the shit out of my day (or taking a nap…whatever).”

Learning to recognise when I needed to adjust my expectations from what I thought was going to happen to what actually is happening, and not just being ok with that, but accepting that it might actually be a good thing, has been a game changer for me. We often do it with the big stuff, but doing it with the little day to day stuff is crucial.

So the next time you think you’re going to be able to do the laundry while your toddler watches a movie and it doesn’t happen because for some reason your toddler decided they don’t like TV that day…it’s just about taking a hot minute to adjust your expectations of what the day is going to look like and embrace the new plan.