Approaching The Tipping Point
273/365 | And figuring out how much we're actually supposed to take on.
I’ve been feeling like a shitty friend lately.
I’m walking myself around the block this morning, daring it to rain on me, and I’m trying earnestly to remind myself that piling on with harsh self-talk is decidedly unhelpful. I’m only somewhat successful. You know, at least, for a few steps, anyway.
But I owe a lot of people a call back, text, or an email reply...
I’m walking down the sidewalk, eyes flitting between the many stylistic front porches in this neighborhood. Quite a few of them have porch-swings. There’s plenty with benches, book nooks, or chairs. People use them, too—these aren’t just for show. Granted, it’s like 7am and things are pretty empty but, come early evening when the sun hits, they come to life. These porches, they’re not gaudy like they could’ve been. They have personal touches instead of catalog uniformity and are awash with colors you’d never find in the Massachusetts suburbs where I grew up. Purples, yellows, reds, blues colliding into one another accompanied by stained glass, wooden sculptures, and mosaic tiles. And the gardens... they overflow with life instead of getting trimmed into tame sameness.
This is a neighborhood of artists, in some capacity or another, and I love it here.
This walk’s brightening my mood and I sigh out of satisfaction rather than dismay, which is nice. I’m in one of those spells right now where I feel like I’m behind on most things, almost across the board in every facet of my life. Yes, I have tasks piling up; and many more are just lingering on my to-do list after routinely getting bumped. But it’s not like I’m egregiously behind, either. That’s the worst part, actually. Things are not going to crash because I’ve managed them well enough.
Well enough works.
But, ironically, not well.
I can parse the shit that truly needs my attention, lock in, and get it done. But it’s also why I’m frustrated right now in this sea of rising tasks, because even though I’m crossing things off of my to-do list at a rather impressive clip, I still can’t keep up. And I know I never will, but I also know that I need to pare back my proverbial life-garden if I want things to flourish and bloom.
Every time I slow the pace, it means letting go of something. And it works; things stabilize. Then, inch by inch, the pace kicks up again. I’m at a point where I need to assess what to cut, but I also feel like things are pretty tight and I’m cultivating a bare-bones life-garden as is. So finding stuff to get rid of feels impossible.
Recently, I was reminded of the Dunbar number as a way of describing bandwidth and it’s been on my mind kind of a lot since. In the 1990s, Robin Dunbar introduced a theory recognizing a limit to the number of people that we humans can maintain stable, social relationships with. It tops out around 150, which is still too many for me. So, as I’m finishing out my walk and climbing the steps to my house, I’m thinking about how social media seems like it’s just completely distorted our expectations around how in-the-loop we’re really supposed to be... and I’m feeling like that extends to how much I tell myself I’m supposed to take on in life, too. It’s completely unrealistic.
So I tell myself so.
One of these days, maybe I’ll believe it.
Our Daily MAP Year Prompt
273/365
What do you do when you see the tipping point approaching?
onward.
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Between around 2000 and 2014 I was essentially doing 1.5 to 2 jobs for less than what I should've been paid for one. Used to joke that when I was only two weeks behind that meant I was actually on schedule.
I'm still feeling the aftershocks of that even now; though they're down to slight rumbles rather than earthquakes.
These days, there's so much I want to do that I have a hard time paring things down to what I need to do. And too often the jumble of this that or that other just causes a traffic jam in my brain and I turn off and don't focus on the essentials.
As they say, the struggle is real. I think I'm making progress, but . . . I've been wrong before. Plus side, you're working on figuring this stuff out a good decade or so before I started, so you've got a good sporting chance! :)
You're neighborhood sounds delightful. I hate the cookie-cutter sameness of subdivisions and HOAs. Give me color and life and individuality; not some freaking WASP wet dream of dreary beige sameness.