Too Much To Do
This. Just this. It seems to have become my mantra over the last few years. I'm under no illusions, it is a largely self inflicted state caused mostly by three habitual problems - an inability to say no, too many ideas and a misguided belief that I can actually do everything. Need some extra help at school? No problem. Can I just mend your top? Of course. You need a business plan in two days? Send me the details over. Don't get me wrong, I'm not actually complaining. I like being someone who can help, I like that fact that other people think I am capable enough that they will ask me. I just forget sometimes that there are only 24 hours in a day and I should probably sleep for at least 6 of them (who am I kidding? Try 4 or 5.) and that the kids will invariably take up at least 6 - that's half the day gone before I've even really started on my to do list. I think the way forward maybe to stop thinking of days as 24 hours long and think of them as 10 or 12 instead. Although, that might send me into one of those glorious "so much to do, so little time!" tail spins that invariably take up half an hour of much needed time flapping about how there isn't enough time to do everything. Hmmm. Are you getting an idea of the problem?
It really doesn't help that I have too many ideas. When it comes to work, I have a brain like an excited dog spotting squirrels. I have SO MANY ideas. Literally hundreds of them. I also find it quite hard not to want to act on them right away - I want to see if it works, what it looks like, whether it's feasible or not. I feel like some kind of project junkie. My name is Anne and I currently have 28 Works In Progress (I'm not kidding, I made a list). I know that what I need to do is not start anymore until I have finished some of the ones I already have on the hook. I do know this. In a previous, calmer part of my life, I was a project manager. I know how to plan and structure a project. Turns out finishing them is more of a challenge.
Maybe having too much to do is a fundamental flaw with living in the 21st century. It's ok for women to be stay at home parents, it's ok for women to be working parents, it's ok for women not to be parents. It's ok for women to own their own business, it's ok for women to have a job, it's ok (if you can afford it) not to work at all. When you try to do too many things at once though, you run into the same fundamental, immovable problem. There are only 24 hours in a day. I want to be a full time Mum who can do the school runs, after school clubs, homework, break up the fights, patch up the hurts, cook healthy food from scratch, play with the kids, listen to their incredibly long winded stories about nothing at all, repeat myself endlessly about, well everything, without either rocking or combusting ("if you wee on the toilet seat, clean it up", "eat your carrots," "it's a sofa, not a climbing frame," "wash your hands," "that's not two minutes," "eat your carrots," "GO TO SLEEP!").
I also want to be a veritable creative genius and a kick-arse small business woman. Admittedly, the creative genius bit might be pushing it, but I have projects and patterns that I want to create because they are my designs, because they are my taste and passion. The projects I do for others, the custom designs and orders always take priority and are always finished. Deadlines are important when you have customers. It is the ones I am creating purely because I have had an idea I want to develop - those are the one that are lamenting, half finished in my WIP mountain. I want to be the smug one who has their tax return in early, with immaculately ordered paperwork. I want to be the one who puts their listings up first for the collaborative market weekends, because I have planned and made them all in advance. I want to have a regular, up to date blog (ha!). I want Christmas not to take me by surprise every year.
The first 9 month's squares for Dye Candy's 2016-17 blanket club, patterns will all be available on Ravelry in the next 6 weeks.
I would also like to wear clean, ironed clothes and live in a clean, tidy house where I can find things, be a good friend, have a social life and see my allotment once in a while. I would like to be fit and healthy. I would like to see a GP about, well anything, without them asking me to stand on the scales. I would like to be one of these perky women, jogging down the road without parts of my anatomy displacing themselves and reappearing in slightly alarming locations (I'm sure my boobs belong just south of my shoulders, not north of my chin). I would like to like salad. In my head, I should be able to do all of these things. It turns out though, there really are only 24 hours in a day and Amazon don't sell time turners. If anyone has this all figured out, do please let me know.
For now though, I'm off to find a biscuit and prevaricate on Facebook for an hour.