I think the thing I like best about retirement is that I can sleep when I am tired. I am not a person who is devoted to routines. I think of my daily chores and desires as processes. I believe major projects should be broken down into minor tasks. If you accomplish a task or two toward completing the project, you've gotten closer to your objective without burning yourself out.
This is especially important for people who display a lot of empathy. Empaths are easy to take advantage of, and, because of their caring second nature, they have difficulty expressing their own feelings, if it is at the expense of hurting someone else's feelings.
My daughter is one of those people. She is the most beautiful person that I know. However, recently she has disappointed me because she would say she would do something and then either forget about it or call me at the last minute to let me know that she wouldn't be there.This was a change in her behavior. She almost always did for me what she said she would do. What became frustrating to me was that I could not tell if she meant "yes" when she said yes, or if she meant "no" when she said yes. I think we both felt a bit of a rift in our relationship despite that she is the best friend I have ever had in my life.
I believed she was feeling pressure to make money, and she was also feeling pressure from other things she said she would do for other people. It was leaving her no room to do what she wanted to do. If she did spend some time doing what she wanted to do, she felt conflicted knowing that she had promised to spend that time doing something for someone else.
It was when I offered to pay her to do a project for me that she could do at her home that I learned the real reason that her "yeses" were inconsistent to me. She finally told me in a tearful release of emotion that she is feeling overwhelmed. To me, I was trying to resolve a money problem. To her, she was trying to tell people "no," but they weren't reading her correctly.
That is her fault when it comes to me. I also am an empath. I was sensing her growing frustration. If she had put the problem that she was trying to resolve on the table with me, I would have made that the resolution target.
When I saw her for the second time yesterday, things were different. I asked Gemma to help her mom because she is feeling overwhelmed. Together, she and I picked up some books and took them to her room. There were dishes in there, so together she and I looked for anything else that needed to go toward the kitchen and put everything where it belonged. In there, I pointed out that the stovetop was clean, except for one thing that got put there instead of into the recycling, and that it needed to be wiped down. Together, she and I did that.
The only job that we finished was cleaning off the stovetop. Everything else just got an improvement made to it. All of it was noticeable to us, but it would still appear cluttered to someone walking in making their conclusions based on snapshots. However, to Candace, picking up the books in the living room, getting the dishes and garbage out of Gemma's room, and wiping off the stove are now all off of her plate.
I will see my baby again today. If she sheds tears again on this new dawning day, I hope that they are tears of joy!
