On Sunday night I woke up at 1:45am and never went back to sleep.  I HATE nights like that.  I could not turn off my brain.  AND I was hungry.  So, I got up, ate and tried to read something to let my mind rest, but no luck.  So after 3 hours of laying there, I got up and went to the pool.  What else would I do?  I surely wasn’t sleeping.  And, my favorite thing to do at 5am is swim….so..swim, I did!

Most of the things I have on my mind are trivial – nothing important but when you are laying there – wide awake in the middle of the night – everything seems important and magnified.  Part of it is the house stuff….this market is SO crappy right now, it is a tad stressful.  But, that is not that big of a deal.  Then, I was worried about my kids’ teeth that are hurting them and I need to get them into the Ortho stat….and then getting my work done so we can take off to Tucson on Thursday for a long weekend…We lost our basketball game on Saturday (Graham’s team) and I hate losing – even though these kids played their guts out…I still come home and try to figure out HOW to win next time.  And, what am I going to race this year?  Big, small? Local?….  And, more and more of things like that – see ALL stupid and not important…but funny how they feel at 2am!

One of the things I was thinking about in the middle of the night was expectations.  I think my expectations of myself are high.  Sometimes, I wonder if they are WAY too high.  And, I do think that my expectations of some of my friends are high.  Sometimes I find myself disappointed with some of my friends – whether they are my childhood friends, triathlon friends, neighbors….or my athletes I work with.  I think it is not good.

But, what I struggle with is do I lower my expectations for myself and others?  You know they always say, “If lower your expectations and they will only rise to that level of expectations….”  I do think that as we get older and busier, I think most people cannot do it all and do it all well.  We all try so hard, but at the end of the day we can only really meet our own expectations for ourselves – NOT other people’s expectations.  Of course, in the Triathlon world, we have to have expectations of our athletes and of our coaches and our support system.  And, I do not find myself trying to live up to anyone else’s expectations (except my Mother’s and my own)…but, I find myself having HIGH expectations of people I interact with frequently and I find myself getting disappointed by some of these people – but because my expectations are probably too high.

Clearly, I need to re-group and fix that because no one is really thinking about this but me – so I need to manage my own expectations of myself, my family and my work….and learn not to be so hard on myself and the people that mean the most to me!    I still have not answered that question after tossing and turning all night!  And, now I am off to bed…hopefully I will just dream about rainbows and fairies and nothing else!