What To Do When Your Plan Fails?

Write a New Plan! At least that’s my answer.

I’ve posted recently about my new plan to work on pacing and also actually keep up with house cleaning. I’d worked out a system using Remember the Milk to help me keep track of all that needed to be done and mark it off as it was done. Knowing that there would be days when nothing got done, I knew I could easily just postpone items to another day (preferably one with nothing else on it) and smaller items could be skipped altogether and caught up with later. What I didn’t take into account are those times when I completely fall off plan for a week or more at a time. This is what happened the last couple of weeks.

It started with a bad flare that kept me from getting things done, but then once I’d recovered from that I just seemed to constantly be doing something that kept me from getting things done around the house. After a few days of this I completely forgot about my plan. Sure, my phone popped up reminders for me, but I ignored them in favor of “better things to do” and went on about my business.

This morning, after 2 weeks of this, I finally had to sit down and update my plan. This required going through and deleting about 2 weeks worth of items off of my list. They aren’t permanently deleted, just all those “late” entries. So now I’m caught up again and the list begins anew today.

I think it’s important for us to remember as we deal with Fibro that it’s ok to start fresh. We have to be able to forgive ourselves for not getting things done. It’s OK. Life will go on if the dishes aren’t clean (or God forbid! If someone else does them), life will go on if the rug is not vaccuumed. And what’s the difference if the bed gets made? We can spend all our lives worried about how clean the house is, or we can enjoy the life we have. I’ve had a wonderful week this last week, using my energy to help with a wonderful project – The Painted Art  Bra Project raised over $10,000 just from the BRAuction alone. And when it comes down to it, everything else can wait a few days extra, because some things in life are just more important!