If you’re like me…

August 27, 2012

by — Posted in Life at Home, Solutions

If you’re like me, it’s 1 in the morning and you can’t sleep. Why? Probably because we’re excitable. New things are exciting. New projects. New products. New systems. If you’re like me, we know it’s not true, but we can’t help but feeling that whenever something new comes along that it is somehow going to fix all that is wrong with the world. Or at least our little piece of it, right? Somehow this new shampoo is going to make my hair do things it has never done before. Or this new schedule is going to make sure that I’m going to get more done. And, if you’re like me, we add and we add until there’s just too much to keep track of. Pinterest definitely doesn’t help.

Maybe that’s why I’m awake at 1 in the morning, because I’m trying to wrap my mind around all of these new things that I constantly try to incorporate into my life. It gets overwhelming. Are you overwhelmed? I am. I have a new clothesline. I made it because… well, I’m not sure why. It sounded like a good idea. It’s going to save money. It’s better for the environment. It’s better for my clothes. Insert any valid reason here. But there’s always a cost. Everything has a cost, right? The cost for this is time and convenience… and mental space. It takes time to put clothes up on the line. I have to remember (something I’m not good at) to take them down before night (or it rains… which it did all day today! Yay!). The dryer is so much more convenient. I can throw them in there at midnight, go to bed, and wake up to dry clothes. Do I have good intentions with my clothes line? Sure. Do I intend to keep using it? Probably. Is it worth it for some people? Absolutely. But for me it’s yet another “new thing” that was meant to make my life better… and yet I still have to do laundry.

I’m not sure where I’m going with this. But, if you’re like me, we have a lot of things rolling around in our head. If we don’t get them out and on paper, then it feels like we just dropped a whole stack of papers and they’re blowing in the wind. You might catch most of them… but there’s always that one. You know the one. You can’t quite remember what was on it, but you know it was important. It had… something… you can’t place it… something you needed to do. But, it’s gone and you’ll probably move on with your life and forget all about it. It wasn’t essential, but there’s always that nagging feeling that maybe it was.

So I guess I need to get mine out too. Maybe a list, somewhere there is accountability (like the internet?), will help me organize these projects and thoughts. So here’s what I currently have going on:

  • building my relationship with God
  • being a wife and mother
  • spending time with our extended family
  • building new friendships in our community/church
  • being a home maker (including cleaning, shopping, couponing and all that)
  • serving as a college minister
  • working part time from home in the evenings
  • a gardening project (and how to preserve all of those goodies)
  • a scrapbooking project (maternity scrapbook… haven’t even started the little Lady’s yet)
  • blogging

These are more or less in order of urgency and importance. I think this is a good start. Maybe tomorrow I can start to prioritize the action items I have for each of these and come up with a plan. Plans are good. Especially when followed. They help people like us to have some order and structure to the floating pieces of paper that are our thoughts.They may look pretty floating in the wind, but that chaos will drive us to do crazy things… like write a blog post at 1am when we know good and well that the sweet baby sleeping in the next room is sure to be awake in a few short hours. (Which in turn causes us to nap all afternoon when she naps, which causes us to lose productivity, and becomes a vicious cycle.) So good night my friends. Thanks for listening. If you’re like me, you should probably go to bed too.