I don’t feel like blogging today as I’m really behind AGAIN and I don’t feel like I have anything to say. I’m a bit agitated this morning. I mean it feels like a positive sort of agitation, but at the same time I’m not sure how productive it is. I am just obsessed with running at the moment and figuring out my splits and pacing and strategies for going forward and I’m not entirely sure it’s super useful in terms of inner peace and happiness. Because it’s based on NEEDING things or at least WANTING things to be a certain way instead of just going with the flow.
So yet another day of feeling wildly behind and not feeling like I have enough time to get other extra stuff done. And then once that anxiety hits me it makes me want to run away from real life and find some relief through watching videos and playing iPad games, which just wastes even more time and puts me even further behind. So it’s like a vicious circle really that just gets worse and worse.
I feel like I can’t really do anything about waking up later on Wednesdays and Fridays though because I only get back from running between 8 and 8:30pm the night before, and then have to cook, eat, drink, shower and decompress, so it’s just not really possible to turn the light off before 10 to 10:30pm and actually last night I tossed and turned for absolutely ages so I’d be surprised if I went to sleep before 11:30pm. So again I think I woke up this morning at somewhere between 5 and 6am but it was too early. I was still feeling sleepy and I drifted off again to wake up properly about 7:30. Then, I’m used to having at least a couple of hours of morning routine, and this morning I wasn’t very efficient at that because I was just so excited about running. Then, I’d had a work email come in and a message from a friend about next weekend that distracted me. Then I was hungry earlier than usual and then I got a phone call just as I was about to sit down to write this blog post, so another delay of at least half an hour.
The upshot of all of this is it’s now 11 am and I have haven’t started work yet and I don’t want to talk about not liking to have conversations and messages back and forth with friends, and it’s great to have work coming in again, but I just feel like I’m in this inescapable loop of being behind all the time at the moment, which I can’t see an end to until I get some space back in my life to breathe. So I feel helpless, dependent on my outside circumstances, which is never a good feeling.
But the truth is I AM in control and the truth is I’ve been wasting a LOT of time lately. I need to take control of this situation, knuckle down and do the things that really NEED to be done, and cross the rest of the stuff off my to do list, as well as minimising my time-wasting activities (especially during the day when I should be working).
And let’s remember to be grateful. Things are busy at the moment because I have work and social stuff and family stuff and volunteer work AND because my running is going WELL and I’m EXCITED about it. That’s all GOOD STUFF! I just need to calm down a little and allow things to be easy and stop needing everything to be perfect.
So again, what’s the solution here. What’s the easy gentle path. What’s on your mind and what is just totally stressing you out right now? What are the 1 or 2 things that, if you got them done, you’d feel some relief. For me right now that’s simply work and housework. Just two things. OK and maybe just book a couple of things for next weekend that will take very little time.
The other thing that always makes me feel better is to just gather all the messy scribbled to dos I’ve put in my diary over the last week or two, cross off the ones that I’ve either done or have become unnecessary. And write a very neat short list of the stuff that HAS to be done now. Move anything else to next week or whenever. It makes me feel in control and that I’m not forgetting anything.
So I hope this might have been kind of helpful for showing the sort of process I go through to move from total overwhelm and stress to feeling calmer or at least having a plan to get to calm.