Reflections Before Bed

At first I thought I should write this in my personal journal, but then something compelled me to write this here, without reservation despite its public format. I ask for forgiveness or compassion for whatever flows from my mind as I share my personal thoughts with you.

I just finished listening to Eat, Pray, Love during my five hour drive back from Chicago. It is most certainly an inspirational book of personal thoughts and journeys toward a woman's quest for self discovery combined with a touch of cultural insight into the worlds of Italy, India, and Indonesia. The audio book is read by the author, Elizabeth Gilbert, with all of her inflections and intentions as well as imitations of her friend's speech patterns and accents- which would most certainly not come across in nearly the same way if I were simply reading the book with my imagination filling in the audio version of it all. I love audio books... especially when they're read by great storytellers, like Elizabeth. ;-)

I just realized that I slipped into writing this post informatively for you and not reflectively for myself... which is what happens when I write a blog instead of a journal. I'll try to continue as if this were my journal...

I feel as though I'm always in a search for a greater understanding of the world and of myself. It's a never ending journey of discovery for peace, balance, and happiness. Some days I feel as though I have achieved it and others I feel as though that goal is so distant and incomprehensible. I have a sense of what it feels like to be free from worry, fear, and doubt, because there are most certainly times in my life when I have been able to appreciate each moment for exactly what it is and how beautiful it is without thinking about the moments that came before or the ones that will follow. I find myself most at peace when I am with other people... giving them my undivided attention and energy. Loving them for who they are, appreciating and acknowledging everything that makes them beautiful, and hopefully helping them see that beauty as well.

The only drawback to this equation is that that my undivided attention, adoration, and energy requires time, which only comes in a limited supply... dosed out into 24 precious hours each day... minus the 3-6 hours my body demands for a recuperative break each night (or whenever it can squeeze it in.) Never before have I felt time to be so physically limiting as I do at this point in my life. Each decision about how I will spend my next hour... minute... second... becomes a reflection of my priorities and progress toward a more meaningful life. Even now, as I write, I am thinking about all of the other things I could be doing in this very minute that would make someone else happy... and I would be doing it simply to make them happy, without regard for my personal growth or happiness. I don't mind being so selfless, it comes pretty easily for me. The greatest joy I receive is in knowing that I've helped someone else.

One of the drawbacks of always wanting to help others and make them happy is the sacrifice of helping myself... which, in turn actually prevents me from helping more people. Confusing, right? I'm still trying to figure it out myself to be honest, but lately I've been experiencing this a lot. Perhaps it is all a lesson in how to set limits and how to prioritize time and how time is very physical, despite its occasionally expandable and collapsable nature. Sometimes a minute feels like an hour and sometimes months feel like a matter of days. I do know that when I am at peace, time does not matter, only moments and experiences. The only problem is, I have a hard time being at peace, when I have so many pressures and deadlines lingering over me, add to that- constant external reminders of those deadlines acting like the sprinkling of salt into an open wound.

If only time weren't so limited. If only that pause button on life really existed. If only I could spend time with my husband, and exercise, and meditate, and answer every email in my inbox, and make progress on every project, and necessary errands, and keep the house clean, and take the time to prepare a healthy meal. Generally speaking, I get so "busy" trying to do all of those things that I feel like I'm not really doing any of them. There have been many days when I have opened my email inbox in the morning and spent an entire day simply responding to the emails that have come in, only to end the day feeling like I didn't make any progress... which generally results in more emails the next day. Yet, experience tells me that if I ignore my email for too long, people would feel as though I don't care, or as though I'm ignoring them. When I don't blog for a certain amount of time, I feel wracked with the same sense of guilt- as though not blogging is somehow neglecting the very people I want to make happy.... yet with the same token, taking the time to blog means that I'm not spending time doing the things that will make other people happy. I'm always making progress on something, always putting out the next fire, or tackling the next project, so why is it that even after making tons of progress, I still have a feeling like none has been made?

I can't help but think of the old saying, "You can't make everyone happy all of the time, you can only make some people happy, some of the time." So, when you have so many people in your life that you need to make happy, the bigger question becomes... who? Who is most important to make happy RIGHT now? Is it the bride & groom who were married 6 months ago and have seen all of their images but haven't been blogged about yet? Is it the couple whose boudoir images I took 3 months ago and haven't seen anything yet? Is it the wedding coordinator whose email from a month ago is still lingering in my inbox asking me to get images for her website? Is it the photographer asking for some advice about some aspect of photography or business? Is it my blog readers, who visit every day just to see if there's something new? Is it my husband whom I've only spent 6 hours with over the last three weeks and whose birthday is coming up in 4 days? Is it my brother who never calls me but who called recently to update me on the happenings in his life but whose call I still haven't returned? In the grand scheme of things, if I can only make one person happy right now, who should it be, how do you prioritize people when they are all so important? (Notice that no where in that list did I mention making myself happy.)

Frankly, I'm very happy staying busy, being involved in a lot of things, and helping others... I just need to do a better job of finding balance between caring for my clients, caring for my family and friends, and caring for myself. I recently came to the realization that there's no such thing as "multitasking" (thank you David Allen.) We think that by multitasking we're being more efficient, and I loooove being efficient, but really, multitasking can often lead to making things take longer. Take, for example, driving and anything else you could possibly do while being in the car: talking, map reading, eating, or just thinking about something else... if any other thing distracts you from noticing your exit or being in the right lane for your next turn, you have to spend that much more time reorienting yourself and getting back on the right track to make up for not being focused on the road in the first place. How many batches of cookies had to be remade because the first batch was charcoaled when someone went off to do something else and forgot about the oven? How many times have I stayed up all night in the name of productivity only to be so tired the next that I could hardly muster half the amount of productivity out of my body? So, I'm learning how to be more focused and how to divide my time so that I'm making room for the things that are going to matter most in the long run and create the most balance... like wellness and family. Easier said that done, it requires a large re-conceptualization of time and the limitations of time... it also takes a more liberal use of the word no and a more liberal projection of deadlines.

It's now 3:30 am and my body is starting to tell me that it's time to shut down.... obviously I'm not doing such a good job of balancing my time yet. As my body prepares for sleep, my mind fights back, stressing about all the things that still need to be done and all of the people that I still need to take care of, thinking about how much progress I'd make if I could just squeeze one more chunk of productivity into my last minutes of consciousness, which brings me back to the question of what is most important RIGHT now? My body says sleep, my mind says 101 other things.

When I was in grade school, I remember reading a very moving book called Momo which had a strong lesson about the relativity of time and how we think that working harder now will give us more time later, when in fact, it only robs us of the time we have in the present and creates more work to be done in the future. I can't tell you how incredibly true this has been in my life. My husband is leaving for Boston tomorrow and when he gets back we'll have a day or two in the same city before I leave for a conference in Las Vegas for a week. The calendar says we've been married for over 4 years now and yet it seems like we've spent less than a year together. I'm desperately trying to change it so that I don't wake up at 60 and wonder where my life went. If you've been there, if you feel like you've mastered the time balance for a healthy life, I'd love to hear what made the biggest difference for you. I'm eager to learn.