Overwhelmed (but I'm OK)
I've wanted to write a post for a few days now, but work commitments (and being in the office without privacy) have held me back. That, and I haven't been sure what to write. A few ideas percolated in my head this morning but one that grabbed me was inspired by Sylvia's post, On being overwhelmed (and letting myself feel).
This isn't a "reply" post, but maybe it can be viewed as a "commiseration post".
We have a lot going on in our lives right now. My wife is pregnant, coming up on 6 months next week. Her parents are in poor health and need care; and because they are in poor health, they won't be able to travel here when baby is born in January. This means two things: we are helping care for them right now, and in a few weeks my wife will be transferring her 3rd trimester care to a hospital closer to her parents and we'll be living with them for a few months.
The other implication is that because we've been focused on her parents' needs, we've neglected our own. Oh sure, we have found time for ourselves on a personal level—that's not the issue. We haven't prepared anything for baby. We have no car seat, no crib, no space prepared in either house. We're flat-out not ready. The silver lining is that we still have time (in theory) to sort things out. I have a coworker who is expecting next month (more on that), and he and his wife are prepared. That's my goal. A month out, I'd like to know that we're ready to bring a baby home1.
Yesterday I was feeling overwhelmed about everything. This past weekend I drove home so that I could start doing just a little bit to prepare our house for Baby when we come home in the new year (whenever that may be). We want to change our office over to the nursery, and convert our smaller spare room to a smaller office. I'm taking leave in the new year and my wife won't be working, so we don't really need a big office anymore.
What had me feeling overwhelmed is that my week has been filled with things to do between work and personal commitments: two gym nights, a softball night, and visiting my friend in his new place to play some crokinole and video games. Two of the three nights I haven't felt motivated to get any work done afterward (after the gym, and softball).
In short, I've felt very lazy and unproductive, which led me to feel like I haven't done any work and I won't have time to do any work before leaving to see my wife for the long weekend. Which led to feeling very overwhelmed.
I took a break during my work day yesterday and started writing in my journal to unpack. I broke down everything I had done so far and everything I had left to do. As I wrote, I realized that actually I had done a lot of work. I cleared out the spare room (except for a large piece of furniture, but it's not urgent that comes out of the room yet) and cleaned a used area rug that we bought last month at a yard sale. The room is virtually a blank slate, prepared for whatever we need to do to convert it into an office.
I also cleaned our dining room table, which was very messy; I also cleaned the kitchen dishes and have been keeping the kitchen neat and tidy. Both of these things were 100% contributing to feeling overwhelmed and that I haven't done anything, because they're big messes that I see all the time. There are still things I need to do in the house, but I realize that I can't do everything in one week. I have two more weeks2 to take care of things, and provided I spend my time wisely, I can get it done.
I examined my to-do list and figured out what is realistic to accomplish this week, and what I should put off to next week. I've now whittled it down to just what needs to be done tonight, which is things I need to do out of the house—shopping, in other words. The rest of the night is rest and relaxation.
And that's the other thing: I made sure that I save any TV or video games as a "reward" when I've finished my list for the day. I tend to fall in a trap of spending all night watching TV or playing video games and don't get anything done. At least when I know there are things to do and I have a time limit to do them, then I can push these recreational activities to the side until later.
So now I feel OK. I might feel overwhelmed next week but I'll make sure to pull out my journal and do some writing.