Rounding the corner into the fourth quarter of 2010. Jesus, where does it go? Looking ,at what happened this year around the house and around the life, it takes my breath away. Yet the ToDo list seems as long as, if not longer than, ever. After a few of the things this year, like Mom getting better but Dad dying, and Magnolia expected to graduate at year-end, a lot of the ToDos have attained (or been assigned) entirely different positions on the list.
It's weird. There's a resignation over some things, and a renewed determination about others. The resignation comes somewhat from realizing that there's not as much time left as there was when I was twenty (no duh!), but also from the fact that I know those things were never as important as they were interesting, and important is the only game in town from here on out.
'Important' brings with it determination and, hopefully, focus. Daily, I find examples of getting things done, and often done well, just by doing them to the exclusion of everything else. I have remarked earlier but want to reiterate: Multi-tasking is crap. Sure, you get three things done in the time it should have taken to do...three things. But by intermingling them, none are done as well as any would have been, had it been done to the exlclusion of the others.
Sure, sometimes, it's not possible to deal with the screaming kid and the boiling pan separately. And anger at not being able to separate them is a hallmark of the mind of the self-important. When the world deals you cards and throws you a ball at the same time, well, just be glad you've got two hands.
But why plan to do several things at once? That's just stupid.
I have a hand-scrawled Post-It on the fridge at home, reminding me of this.
"Doing too many things, and None of them Well" is how it reads, punctuation, capitalization and all.
At least Dawn is out-growing her Post-It, "Hell Is Other People", a pensee from JPSartre.
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