No idea what to write about today and after two days off over the weekend I do find it hard to get back into writing. All I’m thinking about today is that I have loads to do, not enough time, and I just feel slightly anxious the whole time. In fact, I’m going to go and tick one of the jobs I’m most anxious about off my list right now, and come back to writing this post after that’s done.
Hurray! Have got that little job done that was nagging at me. I still have some other things to do today that are disturbing my peace of mind. Not all of them are going to be so quick to get out of the way, and not all of them are things I want to do right now as they’re more mundane stuff which I should really do later in the day when I’m not so energetic.
But I’ve been ignoring my email inbox and house tidying/cleaning for the last week because I’ve been so busy. And it does really get to me and niggle at me, which I think gradually just takes away my efficiency at getting things done, because I can’t ever completely put them to one side and forget about them.
I’m just holding on at the moment to the hope that in a couple of days I’ll finish the work that’s come in. Hopefully no more will come in before the weekend or at the least I’ll be able to delay having to do the work until after the weekend, and then I can get caught up on the email and housework ready for the weekend to come.
Yeah so it does just really get to me when I don’t have the time to calmly get stuff done in addition to the absolutely crucial stuff. It’s silly in a way but on the other hand, some of the things I’m having to just put on hold at the moment are things that make my life really enjoyable. Of course I almost always get my running done and my work, but it’s the little things like making a nice home environment, reading a book, and just being able to stop and stare out the window for a few moments that for me make life properly worth living.
I just really dislike feeling so completely rushed all the time. It really doesn’t feel nice to me, although I do admit that I feel more alive and energetic when I have enough stuff to do. It’s just finding that balance which is hard and that’s of course made more difficult when you are a freelancer and are dependent on whether or not work comes in. I can’t predict from one week to the next (especially at the moment as I’m not exactly overworked) how much work I’m going to have. Normally I might be in a position of being booked up for the next two weeks and in a way that’s easier because I know that if something else comes in I’ll offer them a time two weeks away but right now because work has been quiet I feel anxious about that and whenever anything comes in I feel I have to say yes.
It’s just amazing how often this happens though. After my upcoming ultrarun I can predict that I’ll probably have a few weeks of nothing going on at all. It’s always one extreme or the other, so that I’ll sometimes go for a while week hardly even seeing anyone and then on those weeks there also won’t be anyone much to talk to at parkrun and no one will want to run on a Sunday. It’s just bizarre how often that happens. Everything happens at once and there are clashes and then there is nothing going on for weeks.
It must just be a perception! It can’t actually be like that. It would be too much of a coincidence! But certainly it feels that way right now to me and I just am continually saying to myself, once I get through X then I’ll be able to relax and just do nothing for a few days. And actually that does tend to be what I do after really busy weeks or weekends. I will often take a few or even several days and literally just do almost nothing. A lot of TV, a lot of junk food. It’s like I just push myself beyond what I really want to do, and then I have to recover from it. It frustrates me because it must surely be much calmer and more peaceful to kind of have a steadier happy medium, but then is that really true? Because I have a feeling it’s just my personality to get really bored and just feel very very flat if things aren’t exciting enough. So I’m pretty sure I bring this on myself and clearly I could if I wanted say no to some things couldn’t I? But I don’t want to.
So, knowing that I’m responsible for this stress. I AM responsible for it. It’s not my clients’ fault or my friends’ fault or random luck’s fault. It’s actually my fault and I do actually have the power to change things when EVER I want. Because it’s only my belief that I can’t let other people down or change my mind or say no to things or have things be less than perfect or a certain way. Knowing that, does that make it EASIER? Yes, I think it does. This is my choice. This is, in some way, how I WANT things to be. And so, maybe, I can calm down and let things be how they are and at the very least stop wishing that things were different, knowing that I can MAKE them different whenever I want to.