I tried to break routine today... and failed :(

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The older I get, the less I feel I can expand my boundaries. I feel as if I've reached the max of what I can handle in life, it's not much of life, even if I wanted to be social, I don't have the energy for it, anyways....

My weekend is a time for me to do my shopping for the week. That means it's off to wal-mart. As much as I hate wal-mart and everything they've done to the working man, I usually go there anyways since all their stores are laid out pretty much the same way. There are the older "blue" stores, and the newer "yellow" stores. Makes transitions in life much easier for me.

Anyway, today I decided a new place was in order for me. I instead went to my nearby, employee owned and operated hy-vee. This is a rare moment for me as I'm so stuck into my routine, even if I try to think of an alternative, my mind draws a blank.

The store was bright and visually busy, along with a layout that was unfamiliar to me. I managed to make it about ten minutes inside before sensory overload hit me. We all know how it goes, the vision gets fuzzy and you start to hear every little sound. I ended up leaving only getting half the stuff I needed for the week and now I have to go out again tomorrow. I laid down in my bed for three hours to recover.

New stuff and new ways of doing things just require a lot of energy. Don't feel like this was a failure! It was a successful foray into new territory. You don't have to get all the stuff you need and feel full of energy still for it to be a success. Every new thing is a risk in some way and you got half your shopping done and now this option for a new routine is stored in your brain and you could do it less stressfully by repeating it over time and eventually maybe stay long enough to get all the stuff you need. Believe me I'm the same way when it comes to handling stressful deviations from routine but I'm not as critical of myself as you seem to be about the outcome. Things happen in different ways, there are different measures of success, and I call trying anything new a success no matter how it "ends up"! Cause really nothing's over til... consciousness stops at the end of our lives. It's too soon to call success or failure before then. To look at it very broadly.