You can tell when it's coming. You feel yourself getting stressed over the little things. Your phone rings and you grit your teeth in dismay. You open up the eleventy-millionth email of the day knowing there are eleventy-million more waiting. Your patience is short, your energy is low and you find yourself dreaming longingly of winning the lotto, buying a private island and spending the rest of your days on a beach with a breeze.
Yes indeed, you are mere moments from Hitting the Wall. You suffer from DoingTooMuchItis but it has to be done, right?
Sometimes, we have to take a minute to remind ourselves that world won't stop spinning if every single thing on the to-do list doesn't actually get done. The s/o isn't walking away because you want 24-hours of me time. Life as we know if will not spin out of control if one or two things fall through the cracks.
This, I've come to understand, is an uniquely American concept. The combination pride/shame that we have so much to do and not enough time to do it in. People announce like a badge of honor just how little sleep they are getting, how many hours they are working and how they are surviving on Red Bull and triple shot expresso. That's not sexy. Like dropping dead at 44 isn't sexy (RIP Heavy) or having ulcers at 26 (hanging head in shame) isn't sexy. Living your life in a blur and realizing you don't know where the last two weeks two months two years went.
You know what is sexy? Waking up rested, feeling good every day and knowing when to say enough is enough. Recently, Jayme and I had the stupidest fight over which one of us needed to slow down, cut back and stop trying to be Superwoman. We literally were hurling accusations across the table at one and other. "You need to stop trying to be Dr. Phil and take on fewer patients!" "You need to stop trying to be Dr. Ruth, Maya Angelou and Oprah rolled into one!" Owen and David sat quietly exchanging manly "I ain't in it" looks.
When we finally realized how ridiculous we were being, we started laughing and invited ourselves to have several seats. We both needed a time out and a nap. So instead of hopping up at 1:00am to fire off a blog post, I just... didn't. Instead of returning those emails immediately, I waited an extra day. Instead of washing all four loads of clothes, I piled the second stack in the spare laundry basket and kicked the closet door shut. Ans exhaled.
The world didn't fly off it's axis, no one freaked out and life continued. For three nights in a row I slept for more than six hours. I actually got up and made breakfast before turning on the computer and firing up the cell phone. Let's see how long this lasts before I start backsliding.
Three things to do when you hit the wall. Bang your head against it, knock it down, or go take a nap and tackle it another day. Which one are you? What say you BougieLand? Are we just in a DoingTooMuchItis society? What do you do when it gets to be a little too much? Thoughts, comments, insights...