Since the middle of March I have been tearing around like the Tasmanian Devil trying to keep up with everything I need to do in my personal life and in my day job. I do have the aptitude to take on ridiculous amounts of work and stress which is to my benefit and my detriment. I am finding I am starting to fall behind on some things and generally feel I have run an ultra-marathon by the end of the week. I feel like one of those plate spinners – spinning many plates on sticks trying to prevent any from falling to the ground. (Just go to Google Images and type in plate spinners and you will see what I mean). A cloning machine would be quite useful as two more of me is exactly what I need at this juncture. The perfectionist side of me used to try to stay on top of everything and now I am letting things slide. I usually test my limits to see how far I can push myself and am now learning I have to respect my limits.
I suppose I have been learning about my limits quite a bit over the last year or so. Realizing how much I can tolerate and often find myself asking, “Why do I put up with this?” This has been happening across the board in my personal life, with my interpersonal relationship and with my job. There have been times when I have been forced to face that fact that I am taking on too much – as demonstrated recently when I fell asleep behind the wheel of my car driving home from work. I woke up after having rear ended a tractor trailer. The truck was fine, my car not so much. An alarm clock may have been better been a better wake up call. My Mother told me I am not getting any younger and keeping up my pace and not taking care of myself is my issue. One of my clients accused me of being overworked (ok maybe it is true) and ordered me to keep lollipops and chewing gum in the car if case I feel drowsy. She also advised me to stop working during my personal time and to start traveling on company time. My brother mandated I go back to drinking coffee. My Dad told me only old people fall asleep behind wheel and numerous other people have said I may want to take better care of myself.
It takes much effort to do the things I enjoy when I feel like I am running ragged. Need to go to this meeting, have to catch a flight, need to catch up on 8 hours of email in 2 hours. I find myself figuring out my day based on the number of hours I have available. How much can I cram in? Over the weekend, I decided to skip running errands because it was just too much time driving given I spend so much time in the car during the week. I also skipped a party because the thought of mingling required too much energy. I used to think if I did things to boost my energy, I would be able to keep up my Tasmanian Devil pace. I work out, I try to sleep more when I can, I eat healthy. I even tried yoga (which I enjoy). An attempt to drink one of those green energy juice drinks (made with kale, celery, apples, lemon, and I forget what else) was a major fail because liquid green grass flavored drinks are hardly appetizing. I am likely doing myself a disservice trying to boost my energy when I feel my internal battery is already on low. Either I need new batteries or I will have to shift things around and change my ways or some dynamic in my life. Less pressure, less travel time and more peace and quiet are probably good places to start.
