Something to do

“You can’t call it stress if this is baseline.”

My sister and I share the plans for our upcoming day. What’s on deck or in queue. How we feel about yesterday and what we face ahead. At some point I quip, “If we do this every day, day after day, and we seem to do it well or at least get the stuff done…..why are we calling it stress? This is baseline.” And it’s true. And shifting off the categorization of being overburdened means the day ahead is an ordinary day. Ordinary for me. It isn’t ordinary for many. But this is what I do. And I think I reframed my ordinary because other people comment about it. “You do too so much!” Is it a compliment or a snide critique? I’m over it. This is what I do. And I do quite a bit and I like that. And I usually only complain in the lulls.

Yesterday a patient shares one of her grandmother’s adages, “Honey, anyone can handle a crisis. It’s the monotony that will kill you.” Ain’t that the truth! I like leisure time and can lounge and laze with the best loafers…but not for protracted periods of time. A perpetuity of leisurely pursuits would make me certifiably insane. And so after a pants-off, under the covers afternoon nap……I get up and do something.

  • reorganize my dresser drawers, closet, under the sink areas
  • paint my nails
  • iron the linen napkins
  • clean the silver drawer and that plastic organizing tray (where exactly do the crumbs come from? The silverware comes out of the dishwasher…ergo, sans crumbs)
  • repot a house plant
  • brush the cat’s
  • bake cookies or bread

I usually have a few small craft projects going just for this reason. Few things give me more angst that a Wednesday night after 9pm when TV land is in the doldrums. I don’t watch much TV except the fill the gaps when there is not enough time to DO something and it is too early to go to sleep. Last night was such a night. Yeah, I could unload the dishwasher. Yeah I could do a load of laundry. I could edit the rest of chapter 25. I could tweeze my eyebrows.  I could watch TV if TV offered something! Too late to start reading. Nothing good to read. Harrumph! Two rerun episodes of NCIS later and I can go to bed. It might have helped to get to bed earlier but that 30 minute pants off nap I took at 2PM nibbled away my sleepiness.

Do you feel the need to fill blank spots of time with small chores?

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