355: You have a Time Machine…

… but it can only go back in time two days. What would you change?

I must say that I find this rather coincidental for this to be our first post considering the past couple days I have been dealing with regret and resentment in my relationship. Details are here and here.

Two days in the past. It’s not a lot of time to make things better today. But I do not need a lot of time. Its the small decisions that can truly affect your life, in the long run. Each day you come across a series of quandaries, roadblocks, and choices. Do you wake up and work out? Do you sleep in? Do you yell at the kids, or speak with patience? Have you filled your spouses bucket, or did you dip in it? Two days of procrastination can also lead to a ten tonne weight on your shoulders. So what would I do differently?

For starters I would wake up and I would remind myself, before getting out of bed, that I need to fill at least 3 people’s buckets today. And those people can NOT be: my children or my spouse. I should be constantly filling their buckets regardless of the day.

I would then get up and out of bed early. I would fit in a quick workout, just to get the blood coursing through my veins, the energy flowing through my body.  I would be awake and alert for when my children crawled out of bed. That way, when they got distracted by the television set, I would be able to run interference. I would avoid a blowup regarding unbrushed hair, unmade lunches, and butts planted in front of a boob tube.

I would then plant a smile on my face and walk skip with my children to school. I would be happy and giggly, and we would be ON TIME. I would have conveniently left my phone at home so that during my daughters special day I would be engaged and active in the children’s activities.

Upon getting home, my daughter will have been fed, as she always is, and laundry will have been started instead of procrastinating on it, yet again. When the husband wakes up I would greet him a smile and a kiss and ask him how he slept. Then, knowing what I know now, I would say to him that I feel left out when he is always going out, and this week I feel very sad. He has had an amazing weekend out, he has a bowling tournament and then a bachelor party the next day. I am aware that we will be spending the rest of our lives together, but I still need to feel that, while he is off doing what he needs to do, that I am an important part of his life. I don’t want to be forgotten in the dust of him moving forward. It sounds crazy insecure, and that is probably because it is. But it is who I am, and I can’t change that fact that I am insecure, I can merely hide it, or I can pretend it doesn’t exist. Or I can acknowledge that this is a part of me and learn to deal with that part of me.

I definitely think that had I done this, the events of Tuesday night would have been played out differently, thus effectively preventing any hard feelings that have been stirred up by someone running through the pond of life.

So there you have it, folks. Though it is not a lot of time, or really big things, I think that even just the little things in life can result in a huge ripple later on in your journey.