OVERWHELM

How can I be overwhelmed? My life is so much smaller today. But the past couple of weeks I have felt it building. A feeling of trying to juggle and suppress a whole bunch of things in a variety of places in my life. Work is bananas right now. Everyone wanting something from me, like now! My home life is ok but there are issues there as well. Hard personalities that are often ticking time bombs that seem to go off at only the most inopportune moments.

This is all on top of a feeling that the giant, tiny life that I had before is threatening to return and I am not sure of my abilities to handle it all. I had to get up yesterday, shower, dress, do my hair, make up and then put on actual work clothes with heels and I almost had a panic attack. I felt like I just couldn’t juggle it all. I was completely overwhelmed by my morning routine and the demands of getting myself into professional garb. It did not set me off on the right path for the day.

I managed to get what I needed to do, done. But at what emotional cost? My afternoon was slammed, one phone call or zoom after another, all while my email inbox piled up. I tried to attend to them while on calls or zoom but all I managed to accomplish is doing nothing well. I couldn’t attend. I was not present.

What I learned yesterday is that I am not capable of doing my life like I did it before. I can’t only bring part of me to work, leave part of me at home. And more importantly, I do not want to. The scattered me that sprinkled a little me here and a little me there, can’t operate like that anymore. I want to be present...and so that means that everyone is just going to have to wait a minute. And that is not going to be easy for me to do...make others wait.

I am not a good gate keeper on my life. I tend to let others dominate and overwhelm. So I am going to have to find the strength to hold my boundaries as best I can. I can’t juggle more and be actually in my own life. I am not sure what the fuck I was doing before, but I can’t do it again the way I did it before. I am different. What I need is different. I am not the same so the old way isn’t gonna work.

What I learned yesterday is that when I feel inundated, it is like little pieces of my brain begin to shut down. Not unlike an iPhone who goes into power saving mode. I start only giving energy to things that are mission critical and my relationships are the first thing on the chopping block. I am not saying this is a good thing...it isn’t. But I could see yesterday that I pulled time from my relationships to handle the added stress and demands from work. It didn’t make me a better worker and I didn’t like who I was and how I felt.

Today doesn’t look much better than yesterday honestly but I did learn something from yesterday...

I can only do so much. I am not super human and I don’t even know where I got the idea that I could be anything other than human. I need to focus, handle and manage my day, stress and tasks like everyone else. And for some reason, I am having trouble with this right now. And that is ok. It isn’t fatal and people are just going to have to wait. I know that everyone thinks that it all needs to get done right now, but I am one person and I can’t do that...seriously.

So after feeling completely lost and out of sorts yesterday, I am going to take it easier today. I am going to give my thoughts and time to each task as it comes and do my best to stay present with whatever it is I am doing in the moment. I am not going to worry about the very long list of all the things I am not attending to at that moment because all that does is make me crazy and less effective.

I am also not going to own other people’s shit. I am horrible at allowing others to take responsibility for themselves, especially my children. I am going to insist that they deal with their own stuff and resist the pull when they try to drag me into their school work as if it is mine. It is theirs, and they need to be responsible to it and for it.

Yesterday was overwhelming and I am tired today. The remnants of the emotional overload yesterday is still here today, I am not starting the day clean. I have stuff from yesterday clinging to today. And I need to acknowledge and deal with that. Realize that I am not starting at even, but deficient from all the crap from yesterday. So I am going to likely get less done today because I am still dealing with the effects of the overwhelm yesterday.

I am setting an intention today to make my emotional balance a priority. Everyone needs their best from me and I want to give it but I have to acknowledge that I am not the same person who was content to jump from this to that and back again. I am now a person who needs and wants to be right here, right now in this moment, dealing with what is in front of me and that seems to require an ability to shut the world down which I currently lack. So today will be a day I practice...and if I think about it, that is really what I get to do every single day of my life. Practice, practice, practice...