Overloaded

There are some days when you have too much on your plate. And then there are days when your plate is on fire…and has somehow magically turned into a napkin.

It has been the kind of week for me where I have felt like a tranquilized slug. You know what’s hard to do as a tranquilized slug? Keep all the plates spinning. That may be because slugs don’t have hands.

I’ve felt like a good portion of the things I’ve planned to do are slipping through the cracks, and that’s frustrating. I am a list maker, and I want all of those list items checked off.

Last night as I was cooking dinner, dragging myself from the cutting board to the stove to the rice cooker and back again as the last few minutes of my work day slipped away from me and I realized there was zero chance the coffee was going to kick in at that point, I was frustrated with myself for not managing like I wanted to. There was so much left that I wanted to do and not enough me left to do it.

Then Tiny sat down to practice piano, and I remembered something I had forgotten. I remembered what my priorities were.

I’m not talking about my big priorities—I keep those pretty firmly where they need to be (God, family, sanity….)—I’m talking about my little priorities.

I remembered that, way back at the end of July when I was planning for our school year, I had decided that our primary school goals for the year were music and physical education (don’t ask—I knew what my kids needed), and Tiny tinkling the ivories was just enough to jog my memory.

Here’s the thing about goal setting and priorities: they can’t help you if you never set them and they can’t help you if you never remember them.

Every January the majority of the world sets goals, some of them more realistic goals than others. Some of us don’t bother, because we are cynical and jaded—and I’m all for that too. You do you. But some of us set those goals because we see areas in our lives where we need change. And often by February, we forget about them and go on with our every day lives.

Then there are those of us do goal setting before the school year begins (wave your hand if you’re a teacher or a homeschooler). Sometimes this is like a refresher goal setting, round two, if you will. Goal Setting, the Redeux. We sense another fresh start, and we hope that this time it’ll take. Sometimes, though, it’s school specific, and we hope we’ll be more successful than we were with our New Year’s Resolutions…or doom our students to a lifetime of idiocy.

If we’re smart, we pick a couple manageable goals and make sure that no matter what else we add on top as the school year progresses, those manageable goals stay at the forefront of our minds.

Some of us, however, lured into a false sense of Awesomeness by summer break, set a priority list long enough to strangle ourselves, and then are surprised when school starts and we feel like we’re drowning. We have to go back and pare down until we find what really matters most for the season we’re in.

I’ve been around this block a few times, so I’m generally not a February forgetter or a mile long goal lister, but I sure am an Adder-Onner. I set reasonable goals and I try to keep them memorable, but other things get added on: schedules shift, plans overlap, and suddenly I’m cooking dinner feeling like a sloth in a weight vest.

That’s when the piano starts up. And that’s important, because it jogged my memory. I remembered my specific school goals were set. And already met. The kids were practicing piano, and we’d gone for a run that morning. If everything else fell through the cracks, who really cared?

Did I still want to get to everything on my To Do list? Of course! I love the feeling of a checked off task. That is part of who I am, part of who God made me to be. And that is okay.

But last night, when I remembered that, at the very least, my priorities had been met, I needed to let the rest go. I finished cooking dinner. I ate it, laughing with my kids and my husband (and answering Bruiser’s twenty thousand mealtime questions). And I got in bed at eight o’clock and passed out cold.

Today is a new day with fresh coffee and its own To Do list. I’m going to get to what I can get to. But I’m starting with the things that matter most: time in the Bible, kissing my husband, writing (because it keeps me sane), hugging my kids, getting to whatever school work we get to…and knowing that setting priorities means that I can choose rest down the line if I need it.

I know it’s not January (or July), but if you need to do some goal setting, press pause and get it done. Make them few, make them manageable, make them memorable. Make them the things that, if everything else implodes, you still want done.

And then work so that you can rest.

Because the only way to fight the feeling of being overloaded is to do the work and take the rest, and we can’t remember where the healthy line between the two is until we have our priorities set.