Overwhelmed

There are days in life when I am simply overwhelmed at all I have to do, and how little of it I want to do.

It all starts in bed in the morning, knowing I should look at the clock to see what time it is but not wanting to do so because I know it will mean I have to get up to start the day. Inside my mind is arguing "Got to go, got to get up, lots to do today."

So up I get, all the time with the slowly moving hands of the clock scissoring my activities. I keep checking as I go through my morning routine: am I early? Am I late? What can I spend time on? What do I need to do to get out the door on time?

Even driving in to work my mind is racing faster than the car: what is on the agenda today? What do I have to do? What can I put off until tomorrow? What is going to create issues in my day?

And into the day we plunge, trying to balance the work I have to do and the work I need to do but can't do because of the work I have to do. Everything becomes a trade off: if I do this, this other thing won't get done. Does that matter? How injurious is it?

And before you know it, it's time to go home, with 50% of what should have been done left in stacks on your desk. Your mind races again to what needs to get accomplished at home: what time will I have left after dinner and dishes? What on my list of things I want to do won't get done (again)?

The final insult is bed. I'm always in a quandary, eyeing the stack of books at my table I want to read versus my bed and the clock, which are already singing to me about the fact that I have to get up in a very short time and do I really want to lose sleeping time to read? I always try and compromise - a little reading, maybe ten minutes - which inevitably turns into 30 minutes. Now it's really time for bed.

But in the collapse into the darkness of sleep my mind is already racing ahead to tomorrow.

I keep trying to tell myself that I can find a balance between all these factors, that it is merely a matter of my inability to use my time wisely and schedule rather than an inherent failure. However, the reality too often is that I find my time being consumed by the things I want to do the least, leaving the things I want to do the most on the ash-heap of "On the weekends" or "When I can get around to it", which too often becomes "never".

What if my thinking is flawed: there simply is too much to do, and even most of that is not what I want to do? How do you keep coming back to center when your center feels annihilated by what needs to be done rather than the things that you want to do?

How do you do more of what you want and less of what you have to/should?