What I'm Putting Down
I've been thinking a lot lately about what I can put down. Not quit, not fail at — just set down. Consciously.
My brain is tied up in the war (I know, I know, it’s not a war — it’s a preemptive, defensive military measure carried out by the War Department) and the logistical challenges that it brings with it. Which means less brain space and physical time for all the other pieces of life.
So I’m putting things down.
And it turns out the more I play with it, the longer the list gets.
I put down the Befriend Your Intuition calls. I planned on doing one a month, but in the face of limited time, I did two and set ten down.
I put down running — replaced it with walking and yoga. I’m a 46 year old woman severely impacted by perimenopause whose body is craving to be stretchier and stronger. It’s not asking to run. It’s asking to get on a mat and stretch the parts that feel stuck.
I put down the daily journaling habit. I journal when I want to now, which means I’ll do it a couple times one week, none the next, and not feel guilty about either.
And I put down the separation between book writing time and blog writing time. That distinction was quietly strangling both. I was spending so much energy asking what am I writing that I wasn't writing anything. Now I just attempt to go for an hour, but anytime with my fingers on the keyboard getting the words in my head to be words on a page is time well spent. Maybe it's a blog post. Maybe it's the book. Maybe it's something that doesn't have a name yet. All of that counts.
I've been putting down social engagements too — regularly questioning if I want to do something before putting it on the calendar and not holding back to cancel something if it’s too much.
I want to break that down a bit more because those are two distinct tools that anyone can learn and use.
Looking out for future you
When I go to schedule something, I look at my calendar and ask myself how I’m going to feel before and after that event / appointment / dinner / etc. If it’s something that might socially drain me, I’ll take a look at what is happening earlier that day / the day before and see how resourced I’ll be coming into it. Then I’ll look at afterwards — later that day and the next — and ask myself if adding that thing to my calendar will make it so I don’t enjoy or end up canceling the other plans.
Then I schedule accordingly. With zero guilt if I can’t take it on.
That’s tool one. Tool two is more a personal moral boundary than a tool, but stick with me.
Cancel, but judiciously
I think we cancel too often. Back before text messages and quick, cheap, easy, last minute communication, we couldn’t / didn’t cancel on people unless it was really necessary.
Before mobile phones, if you were meeting your friend for lunch, the only thing that would keep you from them was if the house were on fire, the kid was bleeding, or some other tragedy occurred. Now, we cancel last minute at the drop of a hat. Over scheduled? Cancel. Tired? Cancel. Feeling overstretched? Cancel. Something else (not urgent) came up? Cancel.
I’m not saying all of this is bad. We need to take care of ourselves and our mental health is important. Generations prior certainly weren’t taking their mental health into account like we do now. What I’m saying is that we could make an effort to do it proactively.
When your present self goes to put something in the calendar of your future self, ask if that appointment will serve them — really serve them. Say you have a full week at the office entertaining clients and then your kid’s soccer match after school Thursday night, a debrief on Friday right on the heels of the client visit, a dinner with the hubs and two other couples on Friday, a full day of running around to grocery stores, and family appointments on Saturday, and then a family birthday party on Sunday.
When the opportunity to go to a documentary and talk at the art house theatre with your friends pops up for Sunday night, do you take it? How is Sunday night you going to feel about that choice? If you stop and ask Sunday night you what they want, is it another thing on the calendar or is it a night at home preparing for the next crazy week? Or maybe Sunday night you does not want to miss this once in a lifetime opportunity and takes a day off on Monday to recalibrate.
What I’m saying is that we can, and should, absolutely cancel when we need / want to. And also we can be much better at anticipating the needs of our future selves than we are.
So, if you do two tangible things after reading this:
Pull out your calendar and consciously delete one thing. If you are feeling brave, make it two. If you are on the verge of burning everything to the ground, put down several.
The next time a plan / obligation / event arises, look at your calendar and ask your future self if she really wants to take that on. She’ll know.
This is not a time to doubt yourself.
This is a time to. Put. That. Shit. Down.
