I've deliberately not posted much these last two weeks. Although I was so excited about coming home, the actual reality of eight weeks away was being very much behind, out of the loop and playing catch up every waking hour. The first week was not good; I could feel the familiar churnings of being overwhelmed starting up. Not fun.
So what did Amanda do next? Ok - I did curl up briefly into a tight ball, willing the world to stop. But that didn't work :( After a week of waking up in a cold sweat at 5am I gave myself a stern talking to and followed Dale Carnegie's advice to identify what the problem was. And the problem was time, an underabundance of the stuff. A quick check with a day timer, my calendar and I knew that it was possible to fit in housework, homework from four college courses, childcare, Christmas prep for craft fairs, domestic stuff, college itself, and my volunteer roles ... but it wasn't going to be pleasant. The payback from squeezing everything into the time available is squeezing out regular exercise and keeping in touch with friends - all things a midlife woman should keep in her life as much as possible.
But how to make time? What could I possibly cut out to ease the flow? And it was a college course. Withdrawing from one course opened up three hours of class time, one hour of commuting and who knows how much study/homework. I withdrew. It was not easy. Apart from a couple of toxic boyfriends and a heartbreakingly inappropriate rescue dog, I have never given up on anything in my life. I stick to my task. I persevere. I do not give up, possibly to my detriment but I keep hammering away at the problem.
So I withdrew, and immediately felt a sense of calm. I stopped waking up in a panic and started making progress on the tasks I still had on my list. Strangely enough, once I had cut down on what I had to do I began to get more done.
Maybe that's what growing up means - releasing the load to achieve more.
