Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Feels like Fall in Winnipeg

In junior high school, we received our agendas during the first week of school.  An empty book full of dates to fill was my favourite start to Fall.  I would pencil in that first assignment.  Then fill in November 30th, "my birthday," just to write on the crisp new pages.  By the end of September, the novelty wore off.  Instead of a few neatly written assignments, every day was full of projects, assignments, volleyball practice, band concerts, etc.  Life fills up.  One of my favourite things about Fall every year is the progression between early Fall, full of unknown deadlines, and late Fall, working towards those deadlines and checking items off a list.  I love calendars.  It's part of the reason I love being an event coordinator.

Last week was crazy for me.  I'm working on four tight deadlines in October, all of which have missing pieces.  Besides work busyness, it's my son's second birthday in two weeks, and Thanksgiving, and a variety of other fun but time-consuming events.  Somewhere around Friday, I realized a couple of things.  The first is that my deadlines are mostly self-imposed.  If I want to, I can cut back on commitments.  I can say "no" to extra With a Flourish projects.  I can reschedule a birthday party until November - Miles has no idea that his birthday is coming up, anyways.  And there's no law that I have to go to Thanksgiving dinner.  The second thing that I realized is that even though I could cut back, I'm not going to.  I like being busy.  In fact, I've been far, far busier and done bigger projects with a lot less time.

It feels freeing to recognize the difference between doing projects because I have to, and doing projects because I want to.  And since I'm working because I like to, and going to every family event because I want to, I have nothing to complain about.  And since Friday, I've felt really relaxed.  I spent this morning on the phone, and will spend the next week running errands, but everything will get done.  It always does.  My agenda is half full of check marks, and half full of empty boxes, just waiting to be completed.


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