It is strange how much putting wall hangings up in my living room makes me feel better about my life. I guess it's just a bit of change. Also, they look really good. And they were free (old pictures from apartments past - I had originally wanted to buy new stuff, but this is actually not a great time for me to be spending money on new stuff).

My relationship feels stable, and I feel stable.

One thing about control. I don't know how much control over myself / my life I should have. This sort of relates to the whole being too hard vs. too easy on yourself. The example of my feeling like I don't have very much control over myself is when this morning I was woken up by my alarm clock at 6:30. I'm unemployed and I don't have anywhere to be until 12 (yoga), but I set my alarm for 6:30 because I was in bed at 10:30 and 8 hours of sleep sounds reasonable. I didn't get out of bed until 8. I was sort of sleeping, sort of listening to npr and thinking. Should I feel bad about this? I definitely always feel a little bad when I over sleep. But I didn't really commit to myself that I would wake up at exactly 6:30 and do something. I give myself leeway in my life because I don't enjoy being very regimented, but I judge myself when I'm not regimented.

Does judging myself help me? So Brene Brown talks about shame vs. guilt. Shame meaning "I am bad", while guilt means "I did something bad". I think in this case where I am in the shame category. I feel attached to my inability to wake up at the time that I set my alarm. I feel like this isn't normal - that most people can wake up easily after 8 hours of sleep. Most people sleep much less (even though not sleeping is not healthy). So maybe I shouldn't attach this thing to me?