Today’s thought is provoked by a conversation I had last week with a friend while walking to school to pick up the little boys. We were talking about people who do too much, or, take on too many things. She was telling me about a friend of hers who took on too many different jobs at once at the same time as expecting a baby. Except for the baby part, she could have been talking about me. She said, and these words stuck with me for a while, ‘if you take on too many different tasks or jobs, you won’t be able to give any of them your full attention and you’ll end up being disappointed’. It was as if she’d read my mind of recent. I’ve had a really busy couple of weeks and I have been worrying that I haven’t been giving enough to any of the jobs I have had to do: work, college, home, everything else.
Two balls are work, one is college, one is children, and the last is everything else.
This is me: I can sit at home with two or three applications or spreadsheets open up on the laptop, plus a sketch pad by my side, and a blog entry half written (this one), and I will spend my day flitting between each task not quite finishing any of them. I will only put everything down at the last minute before I need to go to school or before I need to go to bed. I’ll print out work to take to college (or even better take my laptop and wifi). I’ll take work to school events to read during the boring bits. My sketch pad is with me all the time. My to-do list is by my bed. The phrase ‘no, I have no time for that’ is not one I can ever utter. I have about three books on the go – dipping in and out of each of them during spare moments.
However, if I am to keep my sanity over the next six months (until I finish my college course), I need to drop one of the balls: but which one? I can’t drop work as it pays the bills and buys me coffee. I can’t drop college for obvious reasons. I can’t drop the children, they might not thank me for that. And I can’t drop ‘everything else’ because I want to do ‘everything else’ as well.
Sleep? I suppose I could drop that ball from time to time. Or I just resign myself to the fact that I am an workaholic and always will be and just try my best to put my best into each job, task, child.
Any excuse for a cute cat picture
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