March is the month that all the projects I said yes to were due.
March is the month that I nearly drowned in the sea of self-imposed obligations, and it’s the month my therapist told me, “We need to work on self-regulating.”
March is the month my now-husband reminded me, “Didn’t your therapist mention something about self-regulating?” when, for the hundredth time in one hundred seconds, I began a conversation with, “I have an idea,” or “maybe I should do …”
It’s the month when priorities became priorities, and in triage-style, I barked orders to myself in my head and I wrote them down on small pieces of paper at my computer so that I wouldn’t become distracted by the hundredth idea in one hundred seconds, and so that before moving to the next idea, I finished the previous one.
Maybe this makes me sound wishy-washy. Maybe it makes me sound less dedicated to the projects I’ve committed myself to. Maybe my critics will tell me I’m trying to be too many things to too many people; sometimes their criticisms escape the categorical box I’ve placed them in and sometimes they taunt me.
Maybe I should just have one job. Maybe I should just do one thing.
But, as I told my therapist, I feel this sense of urgency somewhere deep inside of me. It’s the Me that wonders amicably about life and how much of it I’m going to have. And it’s the Me that’s wildly optimistic about my abilities (much like my dog Tuck who is currently stalking a squirrel on a tree branch above him …) to juggle this thing and then that thing and then also this thing and then to re-record the three things I’d already recorded but lost on my computer …
And then to put it all away for five minutes, or an hour, or for the 90-minute nap I’m needing most every day these days, and to prioritize the priorities because honestly every project I’m involved in right now is wildly important to me for reasons unique unto themselves.
Why am I telling you this?
Because there’s hustling and then there’s managing the hustle. That’s where I’m at right now, and I’m not alone. I know this because Brene Brown was brave enough to confess something similar during her SXSW keynote.
Learning this balance is my new hustle. Accepting myself for the hundredth idea in one hundred seconds is my new hustle. Knowing when to hold ’em and when to fold ’em … that’s a hustle.
I didn’t know if I would survive March, but I did. It’s April 4.
It’s a month of hopeful self-regulation and lots of probable failure associated with that.
Comments