(I’m fine.)
Every year I get to the Thanksgiving Holiday and the urge to Wrap Up All the Things intensifies. The proximity of the end of calendar year means that if you want it done (whatever “it” is) you better get on it because there’s not much year left. As artificial boundaries go, it’s swell.
This year there are so many changes (and yet so many things the same) that I am absolutely, positively certain I have dropped one or more balls. Some ball drops I know about: I had a whole side hustle that I created two years ago and had been steadily working on, abandoned earlier this summer (and will probably get picked up in the zeal of the “New Year”). Other ball drops I’m pretty sure I’ll find out about… later.
The problem with me (the problem?) is that I am *really good* at planning things out for everyone, including me, except with the understanding of what kind of time I’m dealing with. For example: we’ll get into that gentle lull of the Twixmas week, and I’ll look around at all the things done and all the things to-do, and I will look at my *current bandwidth that week* and maybe (speciously) dollop in the expectation of say, “20% busier than right now”, and sign up for more things. Because I have so much spare time, *right then*, see?
Somewhere around March it catches up with me. Earlier in the year two peers at work staged an Intervention and while I am forever grateful my inability to properly manage my time should not be their problem. Changes are made, plans are adjusted, by August I’m right back to where I was the previous winter: everyone else’s vacations means a natural lull in things which in turn makes me feel like I have more time than I do, so I dust off some of the previously dropped balls and start playing with them again.
By the time we get to the Thanksgiving Week, the immense relief at the prospect of three working days with *no meetings* (well okay two but it’s fine) is whelming. I start to pre-game the end of year stuff: I’ve started going through my junk mail and unsubscribing, I’ve started combing through the backlog and reorganizing it, I’ve started Thinky Papers and Closet Scrutiny. None of this helps me in discovery of *which balls I have dropped*, because I cannot disturb the natural process that will allow those to surface at just the most inconvenient time, later.
When I was running (I have reduced that – no more half marathons, the body does not do the things it used to) I would occasionally sign up for something and then fail to train properly for it (or unforeseen circumstances like a broken toe or such would get in the way). The fact that I had *paid for entry for the run* as well as a stubborn “You do what you say you are going to do” mantra would have me out at the start line, with all of the other freezing people, without regard to my insufficient training. Taped knees, ibuprofen, a decent music selection, Gu, and stubbornness would get me about 10 miles, and after that “it’s just 3 more miles”. I’d limp across the finish line, with a time that could only be described as “hey at least you finished!” and tell myself I’d checked the box. That I could have checked the box in a better fashion had I properly trained or devoted the right amount of time would be the nagging thought in the back of my head, but at least I’d finished, albeit limping.
As we head into the final five or six weeks of the year, I know this: it’s just 5 or 6 weeks. I’ll cross the finish line. And at least I will have finished, albeit limping.
Bobbie Conti 