D.I.D.

Things have been tough. I'm reminded of a metaphor I once thought of to describe mothers. Mothers are ducks. It may look like things are smooth and easy on the surface, but underneath the surface, there is a constant frenzy of thought and action going on in order to keep everything moving. So maybe that's the way it is with us, with this blog, too. Yes, I post all the time about how cute baby girl is, about her newest amazing skill or a funny new trick. Things may have seemed smooth and easy. But behind the scenes, the reality is, things have been tough.

Work. Work has been tough. My work and TH's work. And when TH's work is tough, TH is just not the same man. He is more easily overwhelmed. Quicker to snap. And that makes our lives tough. Add to work the stress he's been under with his parents' separation. Add to that a slew of trips to visit family taking away most of what little precious time with baby girl we do have. Add to that constant discussions about our careers, our incomes, our decisions. And that adds up to a whole lotta tough.

I realized yesterday as I was brooding yet again about my job, that really there are three courses of action you can take when things get tough. You can dwell on it. You can ignore it. Or you can deal with it.

Dwell. Ignore. Deal.

D. I. D.

The first step. Dwell. You can also call this wallowing. Pouting. Being in a funk. It's all the same thing. When you dwell, you take your negative feelings and you wrap yourself up in them like a giant boo-hoo burrito. You feel indignant. Victimized. Powerless. You think about how unfair life is. How hard it is. How big and mean it is. And that's where your thought, where your action, stop. You wear your unhappiness like a parka. It's your defense against the cold, cruel world. It's your protection. And that's okay. Sometimes you just want to dwell. Sometimes you need to dwell in order to get it out of your system. Sometimes you are so exhausted from things being tough that you literally have no energy to do anything other than to sit there and wrap your pout around you and scowl at the world.

But know that dwelling is just a stage. It needs to be a stage. You aren't meant to get stuck in dwelling. If you do, if you somehow stall out here and can never find a way past the feeling sorry for yourself, that's when it becomes a problem. Because dwelling is the stage at which the little legs under the surface stop kicking. When you dwell, the machinery that drives your life comes to a grinding halt. And that will only, inevitably, make things tougher. So give yourself your time to dwell, to pout, to scowl at the world and to feel sorry for yourself and angry at everyone and everything else. Roll around in it until you are good and stinky. And then make the decision to kick your legs again and get going.

Step two. Ignore. This is one of the options for action, for kicking your legs again, for responding to the tough. Sometimes, you decide to simply ignore the tough. Have a problem you can't fix? Ignore it. Move on. Quit beating your head against a brick wall. Choose a different route. Accept the things you cannot change. Or maybe it's the things that you don't know how to change. Or don't want to put in the effort to change. Whatever your reason, sometimes it feels good to just ignore it. Don't like your job? Ignore the things you don't like. Keep coming to work every day. Husband starting to be a bigger and bigger grump? Rather than telling him how grumpy he is all the time, ignore it. Have faith that things will change. Choose another battle. Let it slide.

Sometimes the tough is solved by simply ignoring it. It may just be a question of outlasting some temporary situation. It may be that by ignoring the problem, you eventually become okay with it. Not every problem is worth fighting. That's the thinking behind the "pick your battles" philosophy. And sometimes, even one that may be worth fighting you choose to ignore. Maybe you think it'll go away on its own. Maybe you just don't have the energy or the strength to fight that battle just yet. But those battles, those are the ones that won't die when you ignore them. They'll keep resurfacing, either in your life or your heart. You'll realize what they are because they won't be ignored. They won't go away. And eventually, these toughest of the toughs . . . these will require step three.

Step three. Deal. Yes, it's not as miserably self-gratifying as dwelling. And it is certainly much harder than simply ignoring. When you deal with a problem, you have to do so many things. You have to analyze it in order to truly understand it, to truly understand all aspects of it. You have to determine what your options are to solve it. You have to analyze each option and think through whether it would actually solve the whole problem or just a symptom or single aspect of the problem. And then, somewhere, you have to find the determination and energy to actually deal. To go through with whatever it takes to solve the tough. To face it. To beat it.

And often, it's a long, loooong process. Because the toughest problems in life are not typically easy fixes. They aren't the things that just go away on their own if you ignore them. They are usually complicated and multifaceted, insidiously snaking their tentacles through many aspects of your existence, like a tumor that wraps itself around organs or a vine that threads itself around every branch of a tree. And the solutions can be complex. Complicated. Involving a certain amount of compromise.

Yes, dealing is the hardest step of the three. But it's also the final step. It's the step where you kick your feet furiously under the water, determined to get moving again, determined not to let the current continue to move you against your wishes. Dealing is how you take back your power. How you respond to the tough.

D.I.D.

Dwell. Ignore. Deal.

So where am I? Which stage am I in, dealing with my own tough life right now? I fluctuate. I've done a lot of wallowing and ignoring. I kind of bounce back and forth between those like a pinball. I ignore. Then the problem arises again and I wallow in my misery of having to face it again. Then I get tired of wallowing, of feeling sorry for myself, and I decide to ignore it again. Rinse. Repeat.

Yesterday I wallowed. What am I doing today? Today, maybe I'm dealing. Maybe DID is my process of meta cognition, of thinking about my own processes, of taking a step back and analyzing where I am, what I'm doing, and what I should be doing instead.

Or maybe it's just another way of ducking the problem. Of thinking of something, anything else. Of distracting myself from doing what I know I have to.

Maybe. All I know is that I'm tired of my feet not moving.

Kick-Kick.