Eat nutritiously, exercise, pray, build community, take care of yourself and those around you, hold down a job, go to church, be creative, find balance, be organized, keep up on current events, improve your mind, Make Goals, be politically and socially active, save for retirement, plan vacations, and deal with life as it presents itself.
Sometimes, life is just crazy.
Just reading that list made me a little crazy.
Mostly what I want from life is a giant bag of Reeses Sticks and a fully charged iPad.
I heard a quote recently, "People overestimate what they can do in a day, and underestimate what they can do in a year."
Another helpful quote: How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.
My temperament does not lend itself to projects requiring consistency over time. You need me to stay up 48 hours straight and pound through the misery to produce something amazingly creative and practical at the end of it? I'M YOUR GAL! Let the accolades commence!
You need me to Save The World by just pushing a button once at the EXACT SAME TIME every single day for a year? Yeah, I'd be on that for about 2 days, then complete Armageddon. Sorry for destroying the world, though.
as I age (gracefully) I notice that most of life is about projects requiring consistency over time... creating relationships, being healthy, success at work and financially. So most of the time, I feel like nothing is being done well -I am neglecting my friends and family, I am eating impulsively, I am not making any time to write or be creative, I am skipping Mass.
However, I am VERY familiar with the offerings on Netflix at the moment, and the change of shadows across my ceiling.
There are ebbs and flows to this existence, and this does not worry me like it used to. I used to panic and berate myself for my seeming laziness and despondency. I love the feeling of that tide in full flow, where I am amazingly productive and everything works, and nothing seems overwhelming or impossible. I know, now, that is not sustainable.
Stumbling happens, literally and figuratively. Sometimes, you can't just pick yourself up and dust yourself off. Sometimes, you aren't just fingering your jaw in wry admiration of Life's sucker punch. Sometimes, things break or tear and take time to heal -like my rotator cuff, or a dear friend's grief.
And sometimes it isn't even a stumble -it is just a human need for rest.
Ebbing, slow and agonizing as it can be, is part of the estimate of accomplishments. Ebbing prepares me for flowing, and flowering. Ebbing is the deep breath of an entire life.
