“Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells – ”
from The Bells, by Edgar Allen Poe
I am having one of my semi-regular fits of GET-THINGS-DONE-ness. They come on when I feel I’m going nowhere, when I’m pressed for time and not able to do all the things I want to do. When I’m failing to progress with my writing or artmaking. At the moment, I am both time poor and experiencing an extended bout of fatigue. Not fall-over-and-can’t-move fatigue, but the kind that grinds you down with constant tiredness, dulls the brain and turns the body to lead. Eleven hours every week day away from home, commuting and working, is a major factor in my weariness, but not the only one. It’s a combination of various things. Perversely, the bone-tiredness brings with it a crazed urge to do everything, all at once, as if I’m a fuse on a bomb and the countdown has reached single digits. The temptation to run about like a wet hen, achieving bugger-all, is almost overwhelming. Get-Things-Done syndrome finds me giving myself imperatives:
- Get more sleep!
- Eat better!
- Be more productive!
- Watch less television!
- Don’t waste time!
- Clean the bloody house!
- De-clutter!
- Finish stuff!
Etcetera and etcetera. The problem with imperatives is that while they all sound like simple and good ideas, achieving them is more problematic. Simple is not synonymous with easy. And, naturally, everybody has a grand idea of how I should go about remedying my current flurry of rudderless floundering, but what works for others may or may not work for me (nor may I like someone else’s solution, regardless of its effectiveness).*
Aside – this reminds me of one of my favourite sayings: “Opinions are like arseholes, just about everybody has one.”
As an example, imperative number one – get more sleep (or, if you prefer, GET. MORE. SLEEP!) – should be easily achievable. Just go to bed earlier, right? Hmmm, not so much. Not only am I childlike in my resistance to going to bed despite my eyes hanging out of my head (and an opposing and possibly greater reluctance to get up in the mornings), I have a limited window in which to do a number of essential but mundane things between getting home from work and turning in for the night. Plus I need (yes, NEED) to fit some creativity into the day, or I go mad. No, that’s not an exaggeration. So I try to somehow stretch those few hours, to cram in as much as possible, and – theories of time and Dr Who’s “wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey” cant aside – I have yet to achieve the impossible and actually shoehorn in more activity than there are available minutes (although, slow learner that I am, I keep trying. There’s a little core of me that’s a Tardis wannabe). And because I’m feeling pressured, when I do force myself to retire my churning brain refuses to turn off and composing myself for slumber is equivalent to climbing Everest in my pyjamas (not that I wear pyjamas). My thoughts careen about my skull like scattered shot and refuse to shut the hell up.
Each of those items on the Imperative Menu comes with an added side of similar complications.
Experience has taught me that this running-on-the-spot feeling will pass. Eventually. In the meantime, I am doing my best to turn down the imperatives (why don’t those little – but loud – voices come with a volume switch? Too simple? And why is their out-of-the-box volume always turned to 11?), breathe slowly and deeply, and keep creating stuff. I don’t want to switch those commands off completely, because they are not (entirely) wrong, but I need a quiet brain to break them down into chunks I can actually chew. Instead of, you know, chunks that would choke a horse…
*I’m not asking for help, merely venting. Please do not offer me solutions, however well meant, in the comments. It makes me cranky, and I’ll likely delete them. Cos, you know, I can 🙂
Running Amok With An Ax 