Spiraling

I've got to get some clarity on a few things. Monday I woke up at four a.m. worrying about my week ahead.  I had lunches and dinners with friends, a program on the bookstore to present to a civic organization, taxes and bills to pay at work, a workshop to get ready for, a women's group meeting, reading to do for a book club presentation.

I walked into the kitchen and started getting a little crazy talking about it all to my husband. I even got off on worrying about what is going to happen to all my stories that are waiting for revision: Is someone going to have to finish them after I die? I asked.  He's mostly calm and objective so he just listened. He didn't say, WHY DO YOU DO THIS TO YOURSELF? or tell me that I was making too much of it all.  His serenity was no match for my madness though.

At work, we met with our computer person and insurance person.  Both of them seemed stressed.  At dinner my friend was talking a mile a minute and that's not really like her.  All day I kept running into people on overload. I wondered if my stress was contagious.

I started thinking about ways I could eliminate the parts of my life that stress me out and increase the time spent on what I love -- writing mostly and getting groups of people together to learn things.

I know the things that take up too much time with not much payback.  I justify them in all sorts of ways but I'm realizing that the bottom line is they aren't making me happy.  As my friend said at dinner the other night, we're too old to be doing things that don't fill us up.

I'm doing the Deepak/Oprah 21-day meditation challenge.  Yesterday I meditated at the end of the day and realized that it helped some. Today I decided to put the meditation first in my day.  We were told that we innately know what is right for us.  I'm going to tap into that intuition for a few weeks and see what floats to the top. Not so deep down I know what those things are.