Weekly Blog 2 - Sunday Morning

Woke up being annoyed at myself for making this weekly blog commitment. Don’t I have enough of things to do already? There’s also my fortnightly guitar class to go for in the afternoon, some work that I have to complete before the work week starts (you’re welcome, Future Me), and a whole list of life admin that I had put off in the past week that has now come back to haunt me (thank you, Past Me).

The week has been more challenging than usual. Leo left for Buenos Aires at the beginning of the week and so I have had to feed myself and the cats and make sure that the house is in a livable condition, on top of all the usual things that I have to do. Work was intense and I ended the work week gasping for breath while going straight to a bunch of social events from Friday evening to the entire Saturday, back to back. Now that I have a bit of time to myself I have all the aforementioned duties and then it’s the new work week again.

My experience of the density and intensity of to-dos from various angles (health, work and relationships) has been accentuated by my bedtime reading, “Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals” by Oliver Burkeman. Its key message is that we have only a finite amount of time in this world and we cannot do it all. We will need to prioritise. Speak for yourself, Oliver. I laugh at the laws of physics.

Joking aside, I am painfully aware that the man speaks the truth and there is need for deep introspection to what my priorities are in life, especially with diminishing energy levels that come with age. A few years ago my therapist asked me to calculate the number of hours a day I needed to complete all of the things I wanted to do daily, and the calculation came up to 28 hours. Clearly something’s got to give and I’ve not been able to seriously sit down and think about what needs to be let go.

Whatever that have been let go over the years (learning Farsi, maintaining an awesome garden, making kombucha for instance) were not let go per se, but slipped through my clenched fists, leaving behind a residue of regret. While the book relieves me of my delusion, saying that there is no need for regret or guilt because it was not realistic to expect myself to juggle every thing and all things anyway. But how do we prioritise? I’m still only two chapters in so I hope that some answers are forthcoming.

My hour for blogging is almost up and so I guess I’ll leave it here so that I can move on to guitar practice. 臨時抱佛腳 - hugging the Buddha’s leg at the last minute, what we say when we are cramming for exams - since I have not practised for the last few weeks. I never have the time to, but I’m also not willing to close the door on guitar since I have a great teacher. And so the juggling continues.