Start. Over.

It's been a while since I really put myself out there on this blog...allowing my emotions to spill out.  Probably since March of last year when I flew to DC for a week during a REALLY rough time in my life.  I think that trip, and those blog entries, may have saved me.  You see, I used to have a LiveJournal (back before Blogger and Wordpress when only emo teens had "blogs").  It was my venting ground...my private little portal through which my feelings came out in a safe, but extremely cathartic way.  It's been a long time since I've truly "journaled."  I feel like those thoughts are private, and perhaps better left in my head lest the wrong person stumble on them and think things, or worse yet, take them personally.  But the end result is a bottled up life.  Corked under pressure...and sometimes it has to come out.  Like today.

Today I start a two week vacation.  Not a real vacation, but a vacation from life as I know it.  I'm 3 hours from work, from laundry, from financial concerns, from all responsibility.  I'm a million miles away from the stress that has been mounting and a dozen steps closer to the girl that once was.  It will be a welcome two weeks.  Fourteen straight days of me, me, me.  Sounds bad, but I'm learning you absolutely need that every once in a while.  I can work out whenever I want, eat whatever I want, paint my nails, blog, read blogs til all hours of the night, sew if I want to, nap if I want, watch youtube videos if I want to.  Sure I have to go to training during the day, but that seems minute compared to my average workday.  I have no meetings, no color print jobs stacking up, no impromptu please-allow-me-to-throw-a-monkey-wrench-into-your-perfectly-prioritized-day requests. 

Work sucks right now.  It's so stressful, it's alienating.  It's a struggle every day...and it really doesn't have to be.  Family life is not much better.  With all the stress that's flowing between the four of us in the house, I'm surprised we haven't imploded already.

Don't get me wrong, I love my family.  Like, LOVE them.  But I've been under so much stress lately, and with a baby, a husband, and a mother to take care of, there is never any time to take care of me.  And it's been wearing me down...little by little.  I'm moody, I'm bitchy, I'm depressed.  And I fail to see one ounce of the girl I used to be.  A girl I actually liked.  These two weeks are a chance to reconnect and return to my family refreshed...with a renewed sense of myself and a desire to make the most of every day I have with them.

Joe and I keep saying this year has to be better.  We've had such a rough go of it this last year, that Karma owes us big time.   Let's hope so.