I Don't Know How You Do it All

 

What was lost is found. . . under the stove

For me? 

Adoring EVMB Fans

Cousins!

I'm Taking a Greyhound

Oliver Loves Amazon

Fall Hikes

Ferns!

Where you lead, I will follow

This season's performance

Socially distant masked marching band. Who would have thought?

There is a phrase my ego loves to hear. It longs to hear. "I don't know how you do it all?" Don't we all need to hear that now and then? I don't know how you do it all. Working mothers. School teachers. Home school moms. 

There have been months and even years of my life when it felt like every waking moment was spoken for. Bill calls it trying to fit ten pounds in a five pound box. It's the Stephens' way of moving time and space to make something happen. It's not some huge sin, but neither does it make me very happy. 

When we live in what I call survival mode for too long, we start to commit violence to the people around us. I'm not my very best self when there is more to do than can actually be done. I start to say things I didn't mean and force the people around me into an impossible zone of productivity. There isn't a moment to think about words before I say them and interruptions are a federal offense punishable by extreme grouchiness. Did you know the byproduct of perfectionism is anger? 

I fill in all the little boxes on the google calendar and then when I finally have a day off I expect every task on the to-do list to magically get done in one day, and then I get mad when the ten pounds doesn't fit. 

If I had to do it all again, that is the last twenty years, I might do less. I am who I am, and the things I have done and volunteered for and achieved are part of who I am. Still, the calm of things as they should be is where are souls come alive. I started to rehabilitate three years ago when I started bullet journaling. 

I started by creating a year at a glance bullet journal spread. How many extra activities can each month hold? I made a point to block two weekends each month. No recitals or workshops. I become more aware of the big picture and the patterns that develop year over year between family life, studio life and my kid's activities. Months that have a big event need extra margin. 

I started taking periodic breaks from teaching. If the daily schedule with kids and teaching is pretty tight, which it is, then I need a week off every four to six weeks to catch up. For example, I'm taking the whole week of MEA, the Minnesota school fall break, off. I take the whole week of Thanksgiving off. The more energy I put into teaching, the more I need periodic breaks. It doesn't mean I don't love my job, on the contrary. I love it so much that I know I need to force breaks into the calendar so that I don't get burned out. 

After getting the yearly plan under control, at least to some extent, I dug into the weekly and daily routine. I started calendar blocking weekdays, and even weekends. I didn't do this so that I could do more and more, I started this so that I would have a realistic overview of what I actually could fit into a day or a weekend. I hoped to whittle my list down to five pounds so that it could actually fit into the box I have. For example, on a fall Saturday I used to want to sleep till 8:00, write a blog, go for a walk, do some yard work, run some errands, practice with the kids, watch a movie, go out for dinner, get together with friends for coffee, organize the coats, hats and mittens for winter, make and freeze some soup for the busy upcoming week. . . you get my point. Then I would be frustrated and angry with everyone in the house for not helping me get it all done. 

With a hourly calendar block, I could get real about the day. How many hours is each of these things going to actually take? How many hours are there? It's not that I wanted every waking moment to be planned. There is flexibility in the end product. I don't always follow the hourly plan. It's about picking which five pounds are the most important for that day and letting the dream nightmare of bending time and space go. Let it go. 

It doesn't take me an hour to shower. During that margin I can tidy the upstairs, make a phone call, or fold a little laundry. If I don't set an hourly limit on the garden, I would accidentally stay out all day. Now that I schedule "desk" time, I don't have to be checking and responding to email all morning. I know there is a time set aside for desk work and I can do it then. I'm trying to set the precedent with SAA, SAM, SPTG  and studio email, that I will check and respond to email once a day. When Bill worked in cargo for the airlines, there was a crisis where there was a cooler going round and round on the baggage carousel unclaimed. The cooler was labeled "live organs for transplant." This became a big metaphor for us. Someone missing their organ transplant is a crisis. Nothing involved teaching piano lessons is a crisis. It's not live organs for transplant. Waiting a few hours to respond to an email isn't putting anyones life on the line. It's only my ego that makes me feel that way. 

Calendar blocking helps me be realistic about my goals. If I have goals to practice two hours a day, and write a book and get in better shape and read more books. . . let's face it. . . there just isn't time in an average day to work toward those goals. Some of it is going to have to wait. It just doesn't all fit on the calendar.  Side note. . . penciling in forty-five minutes for Facebook? I would never do that. Yet, without a plan it's easy to accidentally do that. Same with news. Calendar blocking helps me stick to my values. 

I'm learning the ways in which my ego has encouraged me to take on too much. I must be very important since I'm so very busy. Yes, but, I also just really love doing a lot of things. I'm not beating myself up too badly. It's a journey. I can also laugh at myself, especially when I have to calendar block time to calendar block. Still, I feel much less angry than I did three years ago. I'm more accepting of the reality of what I can actually do without harming the small animals, plants and people in my life. And I continue to take stock of what is really the most important. We always find time to do what is the most important to us. That is a fact, but if we are on autopilot there might be a chasm between what we say is the most important and what actually happens. 

Bullet journaling and calendar blocking is what's working for me right here right now. It's a plan to be realistic about my time and how I want to spend it.  

I don't know how you do it all? What is most important about that phrase is how we determine what all is. 

Happiness is. . . having just the right amount of time to do the things we want and need to do, in the way that we want to do them. The calm of things as they should be. Not having more to do than can actually be done. Then our souls come alive. 

I wish this for myself and my family and for you. 

Love,

Sara