The Ticking Clock

Sometimes I really wish that I could be a lazy unmotivated person. I wish that I could be ok with having a million things to do and not getting enough of them done. I wish it wouldn't bother me to sit around in mess and disorganization. But instead I'm the crazy lady who constantly has a checklist and a project list running through her head. My mind is constantly running and buzzing thinking of all the things that can be done. I don't feel overwhelmed by this- my stress comes from coming up with all these great ideas or things and then not finding the time to do them all right then. (Patience is not always my strong point- when I come up with an idea, I want to do it and I want to do it to completion right then and there...which of course is RARELY possible because my ideas are never simple, they are more things like paint and decorate the bathroom.)

Case and point- yesterday morning from the start to the finish of my shower, my mind started bouncing around and I ended up with no fewer than 5 projects that suddenly seemed really exciting and important. See if you can follow the crazy logic...

As I began to shower, my mind drifts to genealogy. I realized that while I'm not great with genealogy from the perspective of generations before me, I do have an interest and can be good at creating my own (and my family's) personal genealogy. I can create my own history through family albums. Oh, I need to get more blurb books done. It's so nice to have everything digital. Wait, what about before I had my digital camera? Oh yeah, I need to finish the picture album from the first years of our marriage. And then I need to finish the album from my years in collage. Once all those pics are in albums, I'll need somewhere to put them. Oh, and the white cupboards in the office will have a lot more space because all the pictures won't be stacked in there, so that means I could reorganize the office. I should get some bookcases. They can be so expensive. Maybe I'll look on Craigslist. When I reorganize the office, I should put Sophia's table into the playroom. OH- that would be perfect because then she can use it for the tea parties she wants to do with her new tea party set from Christmas. We're getting a lot of toys in there. We need a place to put them. Oh- toy box. Maybe we'll give Sophia a toy box for her birthday. She's going to be 3 in February.What should I do for her party? Maybe a Fancy Nancy theme? She'd like that. Or maybe just something based around characters from children's books. It will still be cold out so I'll have to do a party inside. How many kids could I fit in my house? A few, but then there will be parents. Wait, how do I make sure the parents know it's not a drop off party? I wouldn't be able to watch all the kids and Eleanor myself....

Needless to say, I walked out of the shower totally pumped with the fun exciting things I needed/wanted to do but then like always the wall of reality hits me like a ton of bricks. I'm now a real adult and not just an adult, I'm a mom...to TWO kids. I don't get to just drop everything and work on my projects. I don't have unlimited hours to just start painting or cutting or rearranging or whatever it is that my heart desires to do. I can still do those things, but it's always in short tiny increments so of course it takes forever to do anything and then I of course get frustrated because as mentioned before, I'm not patient enough.

I'm realizing that I have to accept what my life is...that I am in a stage right now where I get to do what I want to do, but not always when or how I want to do it. Because of that, I need to be smarter about choosing what and how to do things. For example, rather than use a bunch of time to call around to find the best/cheapest person who can clean my house (baby gift from the hubby), I should just call the lady that our builder had sent over months ago. Or rather than redeem our airlines miles for something I can turn around and sell on eBay, I should just let them expire and use my time for something else.

What I'm really coming to understand--and the light may have finally just clicked on while writing this (which duh no wonder why my mind was really pushing me to sit down and write this post out)--is that despite the fact that I am a stay at home mom and I receive no income, my time is expensive. I am so limited in what time I have that is not spent nursing or caring for my children that that time then becomes a precious and expensive commodity. There's certain things I need to let go of because it's not worth my time to do, or it's not worth putting as much time into as I have in the past. I can do an album, but maybe I just slap the pictures on the paper rather then fancy it all up. Maybe it's worth it to have a little less in savings and have someone else deep clean the house every once in awhile. And maybe it's ok that I don't have huge party for Sophia because I'm going to take the time I would have spent planning and instead spend it playing with her. I have a pretty steep billing rate- I shouldn't spend time on things that don't have a value equal to my billing rate.

The concept is not a new one, I've heard it a million times. But I think with everything I now have in 2011, it's something I really have to start applying. So I will start the mantra "good, better, best" in my head. Hopefully that will help direct me to making the wisest possible choices with my time.