Are You Doing Too Much? - Part 2
January 25th, 2008 by Poppy
Having laughed to myself about Vicki and how silly busy she is, I began to think about my own busy life.
Wednesday last week I decided I had to do a list of errands – buy a gift then get to the post office and send a parcel to my nephew for his birthday, collect my husband’s shirts from the cleaners, return some long overdue library books, and get to the newsagents to buy the lotto tickets which May, my elderly neighbour, had asked me to get for her.
That was nearly it for my lunch hour, and I hadn’t had anything to eat yet! In the queue for the lotto tickets at the newsagents, I went to pull out my purse from my handbag - and the purse wasn’t there. I hurriedly backtracked to every store I had been to, panicking more with each store that said sorry, no purse here. In the rush to get into the post office, back where I had started my lunch hour, I bumped my shopping bags against the door way.
A hard lump from inside one of the bags told me – there was my purse. I had completely forgotten that in my rush I had just shoved my purse into a shopping bag instead of my handbag. My lunch hour was up, I was nowhere near the office, I hadn’t bought the lotto tickets and I still hadn’t eaten.
All of this, not getting things done, making mistakes, panicking, skipping meals – all because both Vicki & I were trying to do too much in not enough time.
A quick straw poll at the office tells me that nearly every woman I work with has the same, complex life. The only one who doesn’t is Natalie, the office junior, and she is only 16. She hasn’t had time to let her life get complex yet.
The rest of us all try to cram too much in. We have busy jobs to go to each day, houses to keep, kids to chase after, husbands to pacify, family & friends to enjoy, committees and community groups which we support.
The first thing most of us say when we finally get a chance to chat and catch up is: I am sooooo busy!
Now, there is nothing wrong with having a full and busy life, being open to new opportunities and activities. But sometimes it gets to be too much. With so much busy-ness, we often forget that it’s time to say no. In our rush to get everything done we overlook the opportunities to not be involved.
Different things keep us busy in different ways. I know that when the winter sports season starts, my household experiences a high level of perpetual chaos. With 2 older boys doing different sports: one at basketball and one at golf, the 2 younger boys trying out for every sport they come across, plus our young daughter doing gymnastics and ballet – the weekends are manic. Plus weeknights all involve training and classes for their activities – it’s almost impossible to keep up.
In the midst of this, my husband is often away on business, and all his needs must be attended to as well. And would someone please remind me again why I decided to resume my accountancy studies this year?
There is also our dear grandma who needs and enjoys having us keep an eye on her. She needs help with shopping, plus likes to sit and chat over a cuppa several times a week. Then there are her doctor appointments, and she is much happier if one of us is available to sit and wait for her, then drive her home.
This kind of busyness is something we have to just get on with, coping any way we can. I keep telling myself it can’t always be this busy. But it is – I am now experiencing a life where I am perpetually busy, rushing from one thing to the next with hardly taking a breath in between. It’s getting to the point where I am not having a life, my busy lifestyle is controlling who I am and how I think.
I am beginning to realise that with my being so busy, with so many things on the go at once, I am not doing a great of those activites. Rushing around like a headless chook means things are missed and not completed.
Click on the link below to go to Part 3 of Doing Too Much, which will deal with the attitudes to develop and steps to take to sort this out.
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