I woke up yesterday morning with the familiar weight of my mental To-Do list--all of the naggy, pesky things that HAD to be accomplished before my head hit the pillow again that night. That's not even including the tasks I'd maniacally scribbled on my desk calendar and on my dry-erase board in the kitchen (because I'm "Old School" when it comes to my organizational tools). As I've already confessed in previous posts at this blog, I am a wretched relaxer. So, how did I face my personal mountain of tasks for Tuesday? Easy: I brazenly ignored it and packed up the car and the kids for a surprise trip to the beach.
There is something so scrumptiously decadent about playing hookey when the energy-draining tasks on your plate are overflowing. It's preposterous and irresponsible, but also bracingly invigorating to postpone "pick up paperwork at township office" and substitute "wriggle toes in warm, sugary sand." Instead of "call insurance company" (can we all collectively groan?), we opted to "make a splash" instead.
I'm not saying that bills can be ignored or postponed indefinitely, or that work and clients can always be shrugged off. But we don’t NEED to do many of the tasks on our ridiculously overflowing To-Do lists, and if you're at all like me, you might be giving yourself all sorts of false deadlines and responsibilities. Why exactly do you NEED to go school-shopping TODAY, when school doesn't start until the second week of September? Why do you NEED to sew the loose buttons back on your winter jacket TODAY when it's eighty-five degrees outside? Throw yourself a giant, juicy bone and delay the tasks that can indeed be delayed. Portion out the drudgery on your calendar so it's not all clumped together in one horrid week of BLECH. Sprinkle in a good deal of sweet stuff to cut the sour taste of chores.
The "sweet stuff" for me--the things that make me happiest and re-energize me the most--are my family (including our velvety-eared dog), immersing myself in nature, and what I call "meditative photography" (quietly searching for the "perfect" shot). When I mix the three: POW. Immense happiness. Photography is the one sure way that I can focus with laser-like precision on the moment at-hand and not mentally juggle my To-Do list for the next two weeks. I can, in 60's hippie-speak, "Be Here Now."
There was, however, one thing from my To-Do list yesterday that I absolutely, positively NEEDED to do: Buy dog food. Poor Delilah had pasta and dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets yesterday, which she gladly gobbled up without complaint--but she needed her "real" food. So, after a surprise trip to the ice cream stand (we were "too busy" eating our ice cream cones to get any photos there--isn't that the best kind of "busy"?), the kids and I headed off to the pet store. That's a place we love to visit (unlike, say, the township office) because we always take a little tour of the aisles where various animals are up for adoption. We laughed and laughed at the little white mice on their exercise wheel, furiously circling around each other on a non-stop trip to nowhere. Curiously enough, it reminded me of my silly To-Do list.
Reflect on this: What's your favorite way to give yourself a break when you're up to your eyeballs in nasty chores? Do you harness the restorative powers of nature? Exercise? Whip up some delicious food? Or do you slog on through the tasks?
*******************
Before you go...
- Did you enjoy this post? Get more like it by subscribing to Joyfully Green via email or RSS reader: just click here.
- Come say hello to me on Instagram by clicking here.
Thanks for reading Joyfully Green!
© 2013 by Joy Sussman/JoyfullyGreen.com. All rights reserved. Photos and text digitally fingerprinted. Site licensed by Creative Commons.
Comments
You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.