IMPOSSIBLE TO DO LISTS

I read this sentence once, or many times actually!, about being able to do anything but not everything. This stuck with me because yeah, it makes sense, of course it does. And then I sit down to plan my week or write my to do list and I realise this mantra as really not permeated into my life or how I’m going about things.

I’m in a season of life (I have mixed feelings about this expression, which is why it’s the only way I can think of to describe my right now), where time is as scarce as my exhaustion is abundant. In a nutshell, I have no time and the very very very very little time I have I’m too exhausted to do anything with. Yet, if you look at my to do list you’d think I’m not in full employment and my kid is in full time childcare. This is all self-imposed, mind you! Well, most of it. I mean, we have to eat and wear clean clothes preferably!, but beyond those *minor* things…

Last week, as Michael and I crashed on the sofa after yet another hard day, I went through all the things I had to do and would like to do. I ended the conversation saying “oh hell, I’m so busy” followed by “I better go and make that bread”. We looked at each other and burst out laughing. Yeah, I’m so busy that what I need right now is yet another thing to add to my list, to make my own bread. But I do!

There are things that we do because we have to and then there are things we do because they keep us in the game. Mentally. Often these past few weeks (and months, maybe?) I’ve thought I had nothing left. That I was going from one task to the next because I had to. And that to me is worst than the tiredness and the lack of time*. To not have any time for the things I want to do. I can’t cut that piece of fabric I’ve carefully selected for a project because I’m too scared I’ll mess it up; I’m too tired to be trusted with scissors on fabric and I know that. I’m too tired to start Ricardo’s winter hat and woolly socks because I need to assemble the materials together and do some maths, the price of wanting to use my stash and not finding patterns that match it fully. But bread I can do. Even if all goes absolutely wrong, all I’ve wasted was flour and water. And you always end up with an edible loaf, even if it’s not your best work.

So bread it is, for now. Until I can sleep for more than an hour at a time for nights on end. In the meantime, I keep items such as ‘cut fabric’ on my to do list because I seem to enjoy keeping things from weeks past on my weekly to do list. Just in case that/this is the week I do manage to sleep and I wake up feeling refreshed and ready to dive into my meditation – making things. I need to have those items on my list so I don’t forget them, so I don’t forget they make me feel alive. But I need to work on not feeling overwhelmed or ever so sad for not getting round to them. That I do need to do. And I haven’t!

 

*Or as bad, al least (these past few weeks have been so bad for sleep that I can no longer put anything en par with sleep deprivation for sanity depletion).

** Better sleep is coming, baby had had an ear infection for a few weeks at the time of writing… last week… because that’s how on top of writing/posting I am *insert emoji with sunglasses*

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