Okay, so don’t get mad at me, but I have to tell you something.
I saw a few red and yellow leaves on my bushes and trees. I know it’s not fall (even if the 10-day forecast is 10-15 degrees cooler than it’s been). It’s too early for that. I actually saw them last week and tried to just ignore it. I thought it must be a fluke. I’m still waiting for summer to kick in! Once again, it seems that I missed summer entirely while waiting for it to get here.
I realize that we’re not into fall yet, but I also remember that it starts to get chilly a couple of weeks after school starts. I remember back-to-school shopping while it’s so hot outside and trying to convince the kids that they actually do need pants and warmer clothes. Now it’s getting colder sooner, it seems, and this is likely to happen within the next month.
Labor Day is only a few weeks away and that pretty much ends all of our summer-type activities. With that in mind, I decided to look at all of the things that I wanted to do this summer and, boy, was I disappointed! I didn’t get to a pool, I didn’t go to a summer concert, and I didn’t even get to a farmer’s market. To tell you the truth, I’m not sure exactly what I DID do but here I am and I need to decide what to do about it.
My first inclination is to look at my calendar and fill it up with all the things I haven’t yet done. Then, though, I decided to look back over the last two months. On most days of my appointment book, I have something written in. They may not all be things I wanted to do and they may not even have been important things, but there is something written on most days. What this tells me is that, even though I didn’t get to do the things I planned on, I had obviously done some other stuff. After looking at it, I realized that I don’t want to add to my already busy days by fitting in extra things I felt like I missed. There’s a reason I missed them; I was already busy!
I’ve decided, instead, to look at my next 4-6 weeks/weekends and decide where I can fit the top 3 things I wanted to do. I don’t need to be an overachiever here. I’m kind of satisfied with the level of activity I had, just not what I missed out on. I’m finding it much easier to make compromises now and I’m not feeling nearly as guilty as I used to when I don’t get things done. I can’t do it all anymore. Even if I could, it’s just not worth it.
I find that almost everybody I know is overbooked, over busy, and over stressed. Why add on to any of that? Take a look now and decide what’s most important to you over the next month. Do those things and let the rest of it go. Then, when fall does roll around, you can sit back and be happy with what you did this summer.
Then we’ll start on fall…and wine tours and apple picking and harvest fests…
