I have to use white out on my calendar. This is not my work calendar or anything, it’s just our family calendar—like the one your mom hung in the kitchen to keep track of the soccer games and such. Ours was hung on the side of the refridgerator, right next to the door from the garage. Many were the times I would come into the kitchen to find my mother speaking tersely to one of us, usually my brother, when a scheduling conflict arose. “This. Was. Not. On. The. Calendar.”
I have always had a thing for calendars. Its comforting to me to come to a clean page at the beginning of the month and fill in a few activities on those little boxes. It fels orderly, manageable. With the advance of time and technology my calendars got an upgrade. There were computer-generated weekly schedules and palm pilots that warned me when someone’s birthday was coming up. These magic electric things could change font colors, flash reminders, and–wonders of all wonders—sync.
Then, I quit my day job. I blissfully relegated my PDA to the back of the junk drawer. No more meetings! No more babysitter juggling! No more multi-tasking! I could downsize to an Ann Taintor calendar. Life would be SO MUCH simpler.
Maybe I should have actually read the caustically funny barbs on the Anne Taintor calendar, because the whole “life is simpler” stay at home mom thing doesn’t really exist. Not then. Not now. Almost as soon as I tacked up my quaint little paper calendar, reality hit. Followed by white out. There is so much stuff on my calendar, and it changes SO OFTEN that I can’t fit all the stuff into those moderate sized squares. I have to scratch things, shove stuff into the margins, and add little extras on with florescent post-it notes. And of this calendarizing doesn’t even begin to reflect all the stuff I really do in a day…”grocery shopping” isn’t up there for instance, or “bill paying,” or “dish washing.” You get the idea.
Recently a friend suggested I solve the problem by getting a bigger calendar. Maybe one of those desk-sized calendars or a big soccer-mom style dry erase board? This does not seem like a good idea. Bigger calendar = more space to schedule stuff = more white out.
Instead, I think I’ll downsize. Yes, gentle readers, “Do Less” is my new motto. Doing less will help my kids be less stressed. It will help my brain stay out of the theta state where all the intake nerves are firing at the same time. And it will help me live counter-culturally to my experience-obsessed cohorts who seem to think their kids will end up living out of a grocery cart if they don’t have some sort of after school activity everyday of the week and twice on Sundays.
“Do Less”
It sounds nice, doesn’t it?
How about it? Wanna try? What are some of the things you need to do less of?
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