Recently, I have been desperately attempting to get my life "in order". I think that I have become a cliche in spite of my efforts to avoid cliches. I feel as if I have rehearsed this line of "I'm a mess" for so long. I'm rather tired of saying it or feeling like I'm living a life of "catching up". But catching up to what? Often times, I'm trying to catch up to where I think I "should be", but this often means idealistic, best-case scenarios that are, perhaps, geared to make me overwhelmed - geared to be impossible. It's been coming on lately that I need to trim the "excess" of my life and really see where I am focusing, rather than "trying to do everything."
Am I out in left field here? I've noticed that I load up my schedule - with tons of tasks - tasks that I could never do in one day, though I make a list that's impossible. It's to the point where I think I intentionally overwhelm myself. But why? I learned long ago to ask the question "why?" and then ask myself "how does this make me feel?" Okay, cliche alert, definitely, but "how does this make me feel?" in the sense of "what is the emotional payoff?"
So, why do I need to overwhelm myself? Why does the list HAVE to be IMPOSSIBLE? Why do I feel the need to intensify the inadequacy I feel by adding an impossible to-do list filled with minutiae and important things? Maybe the fact lies in that I live in a worldly culture that tells me that I should be worried about SOMETHING. I rarely worry - a rarity in my family because anxiety runs in our genes (and in our intimate family culture). I know that I escaped almost all of that worry because I aceepted Jesus Christ as my Savior at a young age. If there was one thing I didn't do as a kid, it was worry like I felt my internal gauge pushing me to do. But you can't escape it all.
I think as kids, we listen and we pay more attention (than we'd like to acknowledge) to the messages around us, despite all efforts to rebel or "be different." There are those that think they "completely rebelled", but I think we all have those things that we absorbed that run as the constants that we don't question or slow down to think about HOW we think about things. Most times, I think we just think --- we don't think about HOW we are thinking, and why we think that way...what the pay off is for thinking that way.
I think my problem is that I'm under the impression I should feel worried and pressured about SOMETHING - even if I didn't have the normal experience of serious panic, I still feel the inclination to make fake expectations and worry about them. In dwelling on this now, I'm wondering if this is how I force myself to be responsible, or take responsibility. Responsible people - they make lists, get things done, get concerned about things; they are tasked-based, never at rest...or are they? What if I began thinking differently, aiming not to overwhelm myself with a year's long to-do list for one day? Even thinking about that list now, I think, "hmmm, but I could accomplish so much more than just the two things I aim to do on my list..." the ambition kicks in, but rarely do I ever accomplish ONE thing on the infinite to-do list, much less two. Why do I have this elevated belief that I will be SOOO much more productive, especially when all prior evidence suggests that I get NOTHING done when the list is that long?
I wonder if it's because I HATE starting off small...I always want to start off BIG, like I can handle it. I want to be an expert immediately, rather than practicing to concentrate on one thing at a time, building to more slowly. Impatience seems the culpurit, and lack of consistency. It's funny that I think I should do the WHOLE list in one day - I haven't built up my task-accomplishing skills to accomplish more than one (or even one per day). Doesn't this, like with most habits and skills, require practice? I mean, I've played the piano for 18 years - I can play some of the world's finest pieces, and I love the ease with which I can now play...but I definitely didn't start that way...why is that something that I forget? That it took YEARS to play with ease? Hmmm.... just some thoughts...
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