Time to Simplify

I feel the need to simplify my life. I'm not exactly sure what that simplification will entail just yet, but I am in desperate need of securing the last threads of sanity I have.  I spend too much time on the mediocre things in life and too little on the important things (and people). My mind flits from one aspiration to another, getting too caught up in small details to the point that I am exhausted and overwhelmed before I even begin. I lose sleep over this. I lose valuable time with my family. I lose minutes, hours, days, months, years. I need to learn focus, and it can only be self-taught through practice. I am too distracted to practice, however. I've been a lifelong perfectionist, and of the worst sort, because if it is a task I have any doubt in my mind about achieving to the utmost degree then I back away and give it no effort whatsoever. And I doubt everything. So I make excuses. I dawdle. I ignore. And then I wonder why I feel so uprooted and fainthearted. I am my own oppressor. I stand in my way, and I pile up as much useless baggage as I possibly can to make that wall sound and secure. Grief, regrets, anger, fear. And I'm really tired of it all.

I'm so thankful for Douglas and my children. I constantly fear losing them (every known accident and natural disaster has come to mind), and I also fear dying myself. Religion is a big gooey clump of confusion for me, and it is not from lack of research. What once seemed so simple to believe has increasingly become more fiction than faith for me over the past years. What started out as a purposeful detachment from God due to shame for past actions has progressed into something just shy of complete disbelief. And yet I still pray. I pray several times every day to a God that I am unsure even exists any more. If that's not enough to give one a complex I don't know what is. But I can't NOT pray. I've tried, and I just have to pray. It's programmed into me. So I pray for protection for the ones I love and for anyone I feel needs a little extra help in life. I pray about my doubts. I pray about a lot of things, actually. And I really don't know if it does any good or not; whether coincidence or rhyme and reason are the only gods floating about out there, or if there really is an all-knowing Father who is still in control of this terribly malfunctioned earth.

So simplify, yes. It must be done. How? I really, really don't know. I will be giving it a lot of thought over the next few days. I have goals in mind, and I need to figure out what, besides my long list of inadequacies as a human being, is preventing success. These changes won't come overnight. It's taken me 34 years to even acknowledge the problem with enough determination to actually make a difference. I just don't want to be that foundationless person anymore.