Catching my Breath

How easily we forget.

I have been looking forward to April for months.  April is the time of pretty flowers, or rebirth and rejuvenation, despite what seems to be endless mud.  This year, however I was also looking forward to April because it represented the completion of a couple of Big (yes with a capital B) projects.  Throughout February and March my mantra, was simple:  "I just have to get to April and things will calm down".

Ahh, the joys of self-deception.  Life has calmed down.  There are no big projects.  There are also lots of small projects, and, blinded as I was by the big projects, I had forgotten how time consuming and exhausting small projects can be.  Ends up it was easier to manage the big projects simply because I knew I had to manage them.  The little things?  Piffle.

No, that is not quite true either.  I am managing the small projects.  I am, I have learned, a manager of projects.  My first thought, always, upon being presented with a project, an event or a deadline, no matter how large or small, is to start thinking backwards, what needs doing, when, and to automatically schedule my time accordingly.   I used to marvel at people who don't manage projects well, used to marvel at the idea that there was even a need for project-management software, as I thought that this was something that all people just did automatically in their heads, as naturally as breathing.  I have learned otherwise, that this ability to plan is a gift, but admittedly, I am still far too often surprised when chains of responsibility break down. 

I had forgotten about decompression time, had forgotten that, aside from the relief and joy that accompanies the completion of a project, the brain needs time for rest, and that resting-time cannot necessarily be neatly pigeon-holed, cannot necessarily be neatly penciled into the calendar along the lines of "Sunday 1-4, brain-break".  We like to think we can mange the world, manage our time, manage our emotions and even our personalities, but the world really isn't manageable.  It is wild and wooly and often unpredictable.  Progress is not a steady climb up a gentle slope, but more likely a long boring path, mostly straight, sometimes even reversing in on itself, before suddenly rising precipitously or plunging to great depths.  I had forgotten that, after the effort of scaling those peaks, pulling oneself out of those crevices, eventually one would have to stop and breathe. 

My brain finally went on strike yesterday.  I had been increasingly tired, not because I was doing too much, not because I didn't have spare time, not because I wasn't allowing time for sleep, not because I was sad or depressed or overwhelmed, but just because my brain was trying to tell me to stop already.  And I, of course, was ignoring that message.  I had been increasingly inclined to fritter away time on Facebook or the web, not productively, just mindlessly, and that if anything is a clear signal that my mind needs rest (and no overloading brain synapses with endless data is not rest.)

Yesterday evening, talking to some friends who are far wiser than I, I realized that yes, sometimes one needs to just let everything go and be a little messy and wild.  Sometimes one needs to just do nothing, not think, not plan, just be there doing whatever even if that is nothing, nothing at all.  I skipped a class I had been looking forward to attending, went home, did nothing.  Even small routine chores seemed too much.

This morning I feel rested for the first time in days.  This morning I was finally able to journal again.  This morning I was finally able to write a blog post again. It is not at all the blog post I intended to write.  But it is the post that needed to be written.