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Towards the end of another busy day my fiance said, “boy it’s been a season, hasn’t it?” That led to some reflection on all that we’ve done: Moving, holiday travel, recovery from surgery and other medical stuff, her busy season at work, shepherding my book through the publishing process, and launching the New American Community’s County Outreach Project.
If you’re a regular reader you know I’ve sworn off jamming all the time to the puttering my way to happy destiny phase of life. Nonetheless, I have started early and jammed all day pretty much all winter. Managing the blizzard and follow up cold snap has complicated the final part of the move and clean out of the old apartment.
Yesterday we strapped a couch and dresser to the rack of the Toyota Yaris to haul them to the dump. Large item collection was suspended. I wish I would have taken a picture, we got more than a few points and laughs as we drove across town. You gotta do what you gotta do.
I also forgot to mention we got the 18 yo off to the dorms. Seeing this young man take a big step towards independence has been a thrill but also a series of one more thing we have to do.
Through it all though we’ve kept our good humor. I was grimly focused on packing and the day of the move but after that period of hard work and focus I dialed it back a bit. My dad hauled furniture and doing that work brings him up in me. I appreciate the technical expertise but the curt authoritative communication style creates problems as useful as it is.
Spraining my foot did slow things down and probably was overall a good thing. It’s also fun and meaningful to be organizing again. Getting my office and desk stop set up was a great feeling as I have been working out of a messenger bag for a year and a half.
To launch our County Party Outreach Project we created a database of all the County Democratic Party organizations. We sent out a survey and I have been following up with state party leadership.
We have been well received and the survey is getting a good response. Early results show Messaging is the biggest need area. We are starting on a technical assistance manual on the topic. It validates the book as messaging is a consistent theme in a lot of chapters. Now it’s off to clean the old apartment and hopefully get it done today and have that behind us.
The Secret of Overwhelm
There are a couple of secrets to dealing with feeling overwhelmed. Our fast paced modern life often feels like far more is expected of us than we can actually deliver. Overwhelm can result in frenetic activity that doesn’t bring results, like spinning your wheels, shutting down and not doing anything, or perhaps worse yet getting the “fuck it’s”, where we start doing behaviors we ordinarily would never do.
Learning to handle overwhelm with grace has been a skill I have been forced to develop. I remember when I was leading a multidisciplinary team working with hard to serve individuals in a behavioral health program and my Manager said: “You look like you feel overwhelmed”.
I said: “I don’t feel overwhelmed, I am overwhelmed.” The issue was not my emotional regulation it was the material factors of the job I was assigned to do.
My first tip is differentiate, is this a feeling or is it a situation that truly exists? If it’s a feeling we use our reliable feelings management skills of taking a moment to slow and deepen our breath. Note any tense areas, I carry my stress in my neck and shoulders, so stretching and relaxing those areas are a must for me.
Note your thinking. Question and challenge any thinking that is contributing to the feeling. Can we look at something differently to get a different result? In addition to challenging negative self talk launch some positive self talk to encourage and soothe yourself. If those helpful and comforting thoughts don’t immediately come to mind, think about what you would say to a friend.
If it’s an actual situation of being overwhelmed then prioritizing and strategically addressing the confounding issues is the key. I rank what I have to do and mostly tackle the most important things first. When you’re taking action you focus on that task with your whole attention and let the rest go until it’s their turn.
We can only do one, or sometimes two things at a time. Don’t try to tackle more than that. Make your list and work through it, most important things first. That’s it. Manage your feelings and strategically work your way back to control.
That one was for me today friends. Time to get back at the immediate concerns of the day. Thanks for reading.
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