It occurs to me that lately I have been overwhelmed by the number of tasks I should be doing. Now, that is not a new development for me or for anybody else in the world. What is a recent development, for me at least, is the inability to decide which task to complete next. And I get so overwhelmed in this state of indecision that I give up altogether and do nothing.
Now, there are times where the next task is obvious. If there's some kind of looming deadline on a project, or it's 5:00 and dinner needs to be prepared, or I have some kind of scheduled activity or appointment, the path is clear. But right now I have no paying gigs, so no deadlines, and there's a little time of day I like to call 1:00 to 5:00 p.m. Honestly, I think that four-hour period is the source of my undoing most days.
In the mornings, the path is clear. Get self ready for day, get Nathan ready for day, feed cat, empty dishwasher, yadda, yadda, yadda, out the door by 9:00 a.m. Crazy scrambling to do some combination of exercise, errands, job applications, and script-writing while Nathan is at school or with the babysitter. Come home at noon, prepare and eat lunch.
And then ... ??? until 5:00 when the path is, once again, clear. Dinner and bedtime routines. Sometimes soccer. Sometimes the gym.
Here's what I should be doing between 1:00 and 5:00 p.m.:
vacuuming, folding laundry, OMG have you seen the mess in the living room?, job applications, script-writing, meaningful interaction with child, OMG have you seen the mess in the kitchen?, Target, emails, phone calls, cleaning the bathroom, picking up toys, dusting, writing blog posts, paying bills, OMG have you seen the mess in Nathan's room?, grocery shopping, possibly setting some kind of controlled fire in the basement because that's easier than cleaning it out, buying somebody's birthday gift/card, taking out trash, okay I think you get it
And then, overwhelmed by all those tasks and unsure of which one to do first, I usually just end up reading and petting the cat.
The thing is, nobody could complete all those tasks in four hours. Well, I'm sure somebody technically could, but maybe not very thoroughly. Especially because some of the tasks carry some kind of weird emotional weight. Like, I don't want to write any of the script because I'm afraid it will suck. Or, Job applications will force me to confront my future, and also my past, and my lack of marketable skills, and question why there aren't more jobs that offer a perfect work/life balance, and aren't the odds totally stacked against working mothers, and !@#%$ society, and frustration, and oh look Goldfish crackers!
Now, obviously, when I spell this all out on paper, I can see that my feelings are totally irrational. If, say, I do write some sucky dialogue in my script, the worst-case scenario would be that ... I have to rewrite it. That's it. And wouldn't I feel better having poorly-written dialogue than having nothing written at all?
And as for the job applications, many of these postings are dead ends anyway. Either nobody ever reads your application, or they already had somebody else in mind to hire when they put up the posting. Or sometimes the job itself sucks, like it says you're going to be a writer (ooh!), but then you have to write 100 blog posts and if at least a million people read them, you get $2.50. And whether the rejection comes from my end or the employer's, it's not worth plunging into deep despair about everything from the glass ceiling to my lack of a graduate degree just for a stupid online job posting. Spend five minutes filling in the required fields, hit "send," and hope one out of fifty applications actually pans out.
The household chores are overwhelming in a different way, namely that cleaning begets cleaning. Like, say I go to pick up stuff in the living room and put the items away where they belong in a closet. But then, oh no!, the closet is messy, too! And then I find a stack of mail I need to deal with! And why does my kid have so many toys? I should really go through purge toys, or store and label them and then systematically rotate them on a schedule. But really it's because I'm a bad parent and buy him all this stuff. And why am I the only one who cleans up around here? Anger! Resentment! Martyrdom!
It's tough when you overthink things.
I'm so overwhelmed by the tasks in front of me, and by my stupidly over-active mind, that everything seems so daunting and I don't do anything.
But here's what my attitude should be:
So, here is my goal for the week: Do one thing.
I can't do everything. But I can do one thing.
1 comment:
Oh my gosh. I totally understand. ANd then by the time 5:00 rolls around...the living room is still a disaster and you have no real answer to "what did you do today?"
I am sending you (((work vibes)))
<3
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