A Big List of To Dos is No Party

Anybody out there a little overwhelmed lately? I’m overwhelmed at the thought of how overwhelmed I am. I do this every year right about this time. I know a lot of people who do. But I’m really good at it.

I don’t even have as much Christmas stuff as usual to get accomplished this year. I started earlier. I’m buying less. I’m ahead of the game. I fall for that trick every year too. And I do not laugh about it when I’m scrambling around with the rest of the idiots after dark on Christmas Eve no matter how determined I am not to.

We’re always busy at work throughout the fall and until after Christmas. I sell advertising and this is when people do most of their promoting so I always brace for it.

But I do stupid things too. I overcommit. Right now I’m working on an open house for the bookstore I love. It isn’t until February but flyers have to be made, addresses rounded up, food planned and February will be here in a flash.

Then, someone told me about a new job prospect. Next thing you know, I have an interview on Friday. I’m already gnawing my nails and projecting into the year 2050. I’m already sweating the airplane flight to the two and a half week training session. What if I die? I hate to fly. What if this is a cosmic trick to see if my discontent with the status quo and my greed cause me to go down in the plane and my last thought will be, “I should have stayed right where I was and been satisfied.” Did I mention I haven’t even been to the interview yet, much less been offered the job?

Welcome to my world, the world of the worried; my house is on the corner of South Doom and West Gloom in the town of Angst. Don’t bother trying to leave town because the highway leads to nowhere.

But, I have discovered Hope. I think I’ll move there.

One of the reasons I used to drink was to escape my own intensity, to relieve the tension caused by self-imposed pressure to perform. Of course the anesthesia would wear off and I would have to accomplish the same number of tasks with plummeting blood sugar and a throbbing headache.

Now I step back, fold my arms and look straight at the pile, the big mound of to dos in front of me. I take one thing at a time and chip away at that pile. If thinking about the pile keeps me awake, I tell myself, “First things first.” The first, in that case, is sleep. When I wake up after a good sleep I can knock the whole top off of that pile in the hour before I leave for work.

The answer is in the basics: Calmness in the face of chaos, keeping things simple, avoiding ego inflation, taking one task or thought at a time, and so on.

So, I’ll go to the interview and LISTEN. Then I’ll actually have something to think about. I won’t worry about the job itself until they offer it to me–IF they do. The plane can come after that.

Same with everything else. I’ll address each task in order of importance and according to time factor until they’re all completed. There will always be more. For me, I’ve found I need to eliminate as many obligations as I can: Credit cards, being the office birthday fairy, cooking huge meals that leave way too many leftovers for two people, looking for “extras” to be in my “Christmas play”–just to have an excuse to buy one more gift.

There are so many ways to take the pressure off of ourselves. And it’s so empowering. I just got rid of my cell phone because people abused it. My bill was higher than my  car payment and people were taking up too much of my time, calling all day for ridiculous reasons. I haven’t missed it for one second. And I don’t miss paying that bill.

Today is November 29th. My birthday was November 4th. Guess what I just realized I forgot to do? Thanks to Bill Gates and countless others, I can do it right now instead of spending half the day at the tag office with my fellow procrastinators tomorrow.