Are You Doing Too Much? - Part 1.
January 25th, 2008 by Poppy
The other day, my friend Vicki & I met for a coffee. We hadn’t caught up for a while, and both miraculously managed to cram this coffee into two super busy schedules. We spent most of the time laughing at ourselves for being too busy, and the things which happen when our busy lives start to give us signals to slow down.
Vicki’s story first – of course, she had a super busy day. It involved the usual events of getting her youngest son to kindy and the 2 older boys to high school. Then she raced off to inspect the repairs on a broken window in an investment property. Then off to the shops before heading home to whip the house into shape before collecting her youngest from kindy.
This was all the usual stuff, which normally takes 39 hours a day to complete. While at the shops Vicki remembered she had volunteered to pick up all the ingredients needed for 3 dozen cup cakes which the children at her son’s kindy would bake the next day.
Rushing home with the groceries for dinner and the cup cakes, she fixed a quick sandwich and hurriedly munched while she vacuumed. After a quick swish of the dishes from breakfast Vicki was collecting her things to get out the door again to kindy. On the way out, she grabbed the baking ingredients and shoved them into a shopping bag. She grabbed another bag and emptied the cat’s litter tray into it and headed out to the garbage bin on the way to the car.
Of course, the phone rang just before she shut the back door. So Vicki juggled bags and phone and keys while dealing with further questions from the agent managing the investment property.
Hurriedly she scrawled a note to herself about the phone call, grabbed the bags and rushed out the door, paused long enough to toss the garbage in the bin, leaped into the car and arrived at kindy with seconds to spare.
Recalling how close she came to completely forgetting to buy them, it was with great relief that she was able to hand over the shopping bag of cup cake ingredients to the pre-school teacher, only to find, to her horror that she had handed over a bag of what the cat had left behind. The flour, milk butter and eggs doubtless lay in the garbage bin at home.
This in anyone’s book, is a tale of a woman who does too much. Surely the world is crying out for Vicki to slow down? Taken on their own, none of the things which Vicki does could be termed as hard or time consuming. It’s only when she tries to do them all at once does she run into trouble.
So is your life something like Vicki’s? Take stock of what you are doing to yourself and those around you when you do too much.
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