Work / Life / Little Balance

[Spooky]

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Edited April 28, 2019 by Spooky

[Little kaiya]

About six years ago I was working a lot of overtime and traveling a lot for work which eventually put a lot of stress on my myself, my wife and my marriage. Ultimately, I had to decide what was most important in my life and decide what I wanted from my life. The answer was very simple, my loving wife and our shared life together.

 

About 18 months ago my Daddy and I met. Over the past year I've earned a couple of promotions into high pressure/ high stress positions. When things have gotten overwhelming my wife and Daddy have always helped bring me back to what's important. With their help I reset from a "live to work" mentality back to a "work to live" mentality.

 

For me it really is about talking to my partners, remembering what we all want for our lives together and then making the decision to focus on what's important. From there we plan some weekends away together, day trips, shared movie and cuddle time, picnics, board game nights, etc. We also tend to put electronic devices away so we can be present in the moment with one another. By living in the present adult time and little time have a loving and nurturing environment to blossom.

 

Little kaiya

[Lollipox]

I think a part of the issue with being independent, competitive and building upon your own strengths- is that it’s conflicting with the feelings a lot of people experience in order to feel Little or small (neediness, requiring guidance, feeling weak or feeble) and so on.

 

But doesn’t needa be the case. 8D

 

I always felt different in my workplace, but that was because all the other females were shorter than me (and I’m not ‘tall’ per se) and smaller than me. So even with wearing a skirt, pantyhose etc. I still felt really big and chunky, like a gorilla in a frock. The other women were also a lot more generically girly, so by comparison I felt like a tomboy when I’m not. And I’m not good at separating work from home. So it would oftentimes overflow into non-work time.

Looking back however, it probably would have been beneficial to put more gusto into having Little time (non-regressive) and feel more like myself.

 

PS I Ilike your twin peaks avatar.

[Guest QueenJellybean]

hi spookz. 

i definitely understand this feeling all too well. 

it might seem stupid, but i've found that just remembering to take five minutes for myself on the regular during the work day really helps.

stretch. do some desk yoga, if you're sitting.

walk a lap around the room. 

refill your water.

put some lotion on to smell it.

whatever it is, make it for you and you alone.

 

i also use my regression as a coping mechanism, or self-care.

instead of a shower, i'll take a bath -- even if it takes more time.

i'll eat with little stuff even if i'm rushing through dinner. 

i'll put on a lullaby playlist while i'm working.

for my relationships -- i'm polya + one of my relationships is long-distance.

end of the day check in texts or emails, even with my partner that i live with, are really helpful in the bustle of life. 

[baby_k]

I think the disconnection feeling comes if you are not living life according to your values, so maybe reconsider what really is important to you.

 

Obviously one can have own life, career, family and so on but there is limited amount of time in a day. What I do is every once in awhile check my goals and what I want from life: not only in long term but how I want my life to be this spring, this summer and so on.

 

I list projects, goals, dreams, wants, desires.... that are important to me and what I want to achieve or do. Then I choose the most important ones while trying to have different kind of things there. So, I have things that are about creativity, career is one category, excercise one, eating and health also are important. If I see that I only focus on certain type of things ( like just career ), it is sign to me to pay more attention to other things too. I then have SMALL list of things to focus and I also make practical plan on how the list comes into reality.

 

( Process is pretty much the same as I wrote about selfcare in here: https://www.ddlgforum.com/topic/40032-self-care-challenges/ (sfw) )

 

One thing I also recommend doing is treasure map/vision board/dream board ( you can find lot of examples and instructions online ). Personaly I just use Pinterest to pin pictures that inspire me and that represent life I want to have. But doing these things give at least to me refocus on what I want and then without noticing I start to make better choices or choices that bring me more happiness. And first time I made my treasure map was honestly speaking quite eye opening as how my life was in reality wasn't that close to what I desired even I had thought so. It still is puzzling how different my treasure maps sometimes look even there may be just some months between them.

 

Anyhoowwwww. I think knowing what sort of life you would want is the main thing. As when you really want something, you will make time for it. Even of course some days just are super busy, out of control and you are just happy to have survived them but still in bigger scale: your life is what you make it. And you should make it so that it brings you as much happiness as possible imo.

[Spooky]