Four weeks ago*, at 6:30am on a cold Friday morning, I was on a ferryboat looking out at grey and fog over cold water, with the *bitterest* coffee I have ever had, on my way to an all-day nonprofit seminar, and if that isn’t the most Pacific Northwest thing I could do, I don’t know what is.
I am here for it (well, most of it. The coffee was admittedly a disappointment). I’m also keenly aware that I have, YET AGAIN, signed up for All the Things.
Being on a ship with no internet for 30 minutes meant I had time to figure out why I do this. As my husband and I looked out over our next couple of months we found there is no down time. None. There is always something to do/to be done, always a commitment. I think largely it’s a conflation of “living” with “busy”. Think about it – when you hear people use the phrase “living life to the fullest” you imagine — or at least I do — bungee jumping or some sort of extreme activity. I am grateful my meetings are not like bungee jumping.
This (the Do All the Things) is not happenstance; it is deliberate, even if I do not recognize it in the moment. If I keep myself very busy, I don’t have to pay attention to the things that bother me: I keep myself very busy because it is a measure of control, and also of comfort: as the world turns, churns, and burns, I can at least say I’m *doing something*. I cannot move mountains and I cannot move governments, but I can help people get housed and fed and educated. I can help people do what they need to do so they can do what they can control; and maybe if enough of us do that we can collectively steer the ship – or steer those steering a ship.
“Compartmentalization”. “Mindfulness”. “Deliberate Action”. These are all mantras as we go into intense or busy periods, and they mostly cover the how-to. To be clear, not all of the Things I am Doing are in service to others. There’s fun stuff in there too — like a series of running events, a vacation, hobbies, friends, family — but fun things require preparation and planning, too.
Which works really well until something catches up to you. The very next week after my ferry trip, I caught a bug and was laid out for a day – a day in which I had something like 10 meetings scheduled. I managed to attend six of them and divert four. Tell me why I felt guilty, even though I slept in until 7 and went to bed at 5.
There’s a specific comfort (to me) in the logistics of life. Do this thing here in preparation for that thing there, and then that thing will be better off by it. My current challenge is when you layer so many blocks of preparation, it becomes a very tight Tetris game. The music speeds up, the blocks speed up, and they pile up. Understand this: I was — and I think still am – very, very good at Tetris. I reliably got to the Space Shuttle when playing, and the faster the music went the better my “flow state” got. Until it didn’t. The fine thread I am and have been seeking is that state *before* game over, where I can Do All the Things but do not crash. In the videogame (and this was the old days, with an actual console and an actual cartridge you had to actually blow on) you hit “restart”, in life it tends to be your body (or your brain, or both) hitting “restart”.
So, the music is speeding up, and the blocks are speeding up, and so far, I’m able to keep up. I’m going to go for the Space Shuttle, again.
- Register to vote (WA) (Find your State Election Office)
- Help defend *all* of the Bill of Rights (ACLU)
- Feed people (Hopelink, Feed America)
- House people (Habitat for Humanity)
- Support Kids (Boys and Girls Club)
Things I’m Specifically Doing
*Posts aren’t infrequent because I don’t have time (well, not entirely because of that). It’s just there is so much in the world right now, and I feel like I can only occasionally dip in and say things, without adding (too much) to the cacophony.
Bobbie Conti 