My Life Feels like Hot Mess: A Reminder to Us All

My Life Feels like Hot Mess: A Reminder to Us All

Let me recap my Friday for you.

Here’s how it should have gone.

• 5:30 am – Up and at ‘em!

• 6:30 am – Leave for work

• 7:00 am – Get to work

• 11:45 am – Eat lunch, leftovers from last night because I’m broke and have no business eating out

• 3:30 pm – Get off work

• 3:45 pm – Get allergy shots

• 4:15 pm – Head home to enjoy a raging Friday night with the Gabster (my canine companion, of course)

Here’s how it actually went.

• 5:30 am – Alarm goes off; I hit snooze

• 6:00 am – I decide that I’ll go get my shot when they open at 8:00 am and head to work afterwards.  “Sure, I’ll have to work until 5:30, but at least I get another 30 minutes of sleep!”

• 6:30 am – Alarm goes off again; I hit snooze again

• 6:45 am – I finally get out of bed... and move to get ready as quickly as possible.

• 7:35 am – I decide I have time to go by Starbucks and grab some breakfast on my way to the allergist.

• 7:45 am – I go through the Starbucks drive-thru, ordering a drink and a breakfast sandwich.  They hand me my drink, I say, “Thank you”… And proceed to drive off without my sandwich.  I get about 1 mile down the road before I realize.  My immediate instinct is to turn around, but I don’t have the extra five minutes to spare.  If I don’t head straight to the allergist, I won’t have time to get the shot, wait the 30 minutes for observation, and still get to work on time.  My next thought is to call them and explain what I did, pray they can credit me for the sandwich somehow.  As soon as I pick the phone up, I remember that don’t have cell service at the moment (due to a mistake regarding the switch from Verizon to AT&T, my Verizon service was cut off before my AT&T phone got to me).  “Oh well,” I think, “I’m just out of that $6.  Gotta move on with my day.”

• 8:02 am – I arrive at the allergist, and they inform me that they don’t have any serum to give me a shot, because I never returned a call from the billing department about mixing a new vial.  I just laugh at myself at this point.  Of course I can’t even get my allergy shot.  It’s no one’s fault but mine, and there’s nothing we can do about it today.  I’ll call the billing folks when I get to work.

• 11:35 am – My breakfast-sandwich-less stomach is growling.  I decide it’s time for lunch… and remember that my leftovers are still sitting in the fridge at home. I order from the Mexican restaurant across the street, spending money I don’t have.  By the time I pick it up and get back to the office, my 30-minute lunch is 10 minutes from over, so I eat quickly and give myself indigestion.

Now this particular day is definitely more of a hot mess than most, but it triggered me to want to write about the general lack of control I feel in my life.  I find small moments of purpose – like when I’m genuinely helpful to a member of the public at work or when I find the time to exercise a couple of days a week – but overall, I feel totally out of control.  Like I’m always staying up later than I planned, and never getting enough sleep, forgetting to call someone, blowing my budget a week before I get paid again.  My apartment is messy, my car is disgusting (which is one of my dad’s pet peeves… Sorry, Dad!), my hair goes up in a bun almost every day for work.  What am I doing?

I wish I could press a reset button on Monday and suddenly be the person I want to be.  What’s stopping me?  The answer: in a lot of ways, I already am the person I want to be.  I am kind, generous, and patient.  I generally have high self-esteem.  I’m funny and encouraging.  So what if I’m a hot mess?  I’m a hot mess of awesome.  So here’s a reminder to myself and all of you: just keep doing the best you can.  Appreciate yourself! Give yourself a break.  LAUGH IT OFF!  You’re okay.  You’re great!  And I’m great too.