I think I"m making some moderate headway in habit changing.
Entry posted by Briannah
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So usually my add and natural personality has us living very by ear. Planning is SO not my thing, and it has been an herculean effort to start developing that skill. But the staycation and vacations after peak season are important to Nikki, downtime after that crazy work schedule, so I'm trying to be more organized about it to further reduce the stress on Nikki. Easier said than done, but I'm definitely making headway.
I have a menu list for staycation, no more arguments about what to eat. We have this weird dynamic there, where Nikki apparently believes I won't eat ANY food so he's not going to choose anything and that responsibility is fully upon me (complete with complaining when I do pick) and I have an inherent emotional pushback against "whatever you want" that stems from a sense that relationships should be about both, and I emotionally hear "whatever you want" as "I don't really care, pick something and shut up so I can go back to forgetting about you for a while". I've tried communicating this to Nikki, but no change in our patterns from that side yet, so I'm trying harder on mine to be different. Avoid the entire context then and pretend it doesn't happen I suppose.
As for vacation, I have already done the budget, booked the cruise, booked the excursions, booked the hotels (except hotel B, I want his input on it since there are options half the price of our preferred hotel brand in the area and it is just one night) on a planned we are driving from home to destination a day one, and destination a hotel to hotel b that is right by the marina day 2, and then from 2 to the parking which I have already prebooked. And booked the hotel we always use on the way home. Two stays on the way there because we arrive in Florida at night, one becuase it's fine to arrive home at night. 
So this will remove the everyone is tired, cranky, and really wants out of the car fighting over finding a place to stay that usually occurs trying to find an open reasonably priced room Florida. Nikki often doesn't want to prebook everything because he likes the flexibility of driving and stopping at will, but it's really not working out so well. We're going to try organized. And under budget. Black Friday got us a good deal on the room, so did prebooking the hotels, and the parking area we use always includes on free day if you pay in advance instead of at the lot(and I signed up for their parking rewards card, every 10 days you earn a free one, and the credits supposedly never expire). And then I put all the paperwork into one of the old travel clutches they used to give you when you went on cruises (now everyone is just supposed to print their documents, I know it's cheaper and all, but I really miss the little thrill of getting that clutch in the mail with the formal tickets, luggage tags, and welcome aboard brochures to leaf through!). Fortunatly I had saved one, it's a great way to keep the pass ports, all travel papers, and such all in one place and make it easier on the trip.
I've even improved my packing skills. We pack a small seperate duffel bag entirely for the hotels so we don't have to mess with the big luggage. Just grab our litle hotel bag and carry on for the ship (becuase this usually has our electronics and toothbrushes), quick and easy. We started doing that last two cruises, and it worked wonderfully.
So I'm apparently teaching my brain the value of organization little by little. The big successful vacation improvement emotional behavior reward is starting to spill over into other things, planning meals and shopping off a list instead of just getting food in general I"m familiar with and trying to wing it.
There is some internal emotional blowback of course, I can't quite overcome the resentment of all the time it takes to plan everything out. I know rationally that I'm actually saving time, and stress, but emotions don't come from rational thinking. If they did, this would be a much easier place to live in. But it's easier to deal with those resentful feelings knowing that I'm getting something out of the work.
And the lesson I learned today, if it's this hard to push myself to improving my behavior and actions on a thing that isn't hugely emotionally invested, I need to have more patience with the world no matter how much I hate bullying and segregation and oppression, because how much harder is it to change the feelings that create that.
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