Done for the Week: More Time on the Hamster Wheel

Another week.  Another few dollars.  And continuing fatigue and overcommitment.  It must be midwinter.

Here's what I slogged my way through last week. 

Done for the Week:  Feb. 7-13

1. Continued off-season race training, still fighting a sinus infection and an intestinal bug; biked once
2. Finished Buddha's Brain:  The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom, by Rick Hanson
3. Stepped up volunteer support to transitioning nonprofit, due to death in colleague's family
4. Worked my two part-time jobs
5. Published 5 blog posts
6. Wrote 3 Gratitude Journal entries
7. Meditated 3 times
8. Attended candidates' forum on county's jobs emergency
9. Watched our 2 teams play 2 basketball games
10. Attended Issues Night
11. Attended showing of 9500 Liberty and panel discussion on anti-immigrant legislation
12. Attended two yoga classes
13. Learned some new html tricks
14. Babysat for my grandson; watched Babe (the Pig)
15. Spent two scheduled sessions on "novelling"
16. Took my dog to the dog park with my son and husband
17. Had Happy Hour soup date with my husband
18. Sent medical information to my sister, to help with my mom's care

Last week's focus goal was to "ease into the coming week, and to resist getting drawn into the vortex of other people's agendas."  This goal fell victim to the unexpected death of my colleague's brother, which led me to take up some significant slack in our organization's ongoing overload of work and crises.  What can I say?  If there is some other way to handle this kind of thing, I don't know what it is.  The best I can aim for, I suppose, is to trim my list of "subject to's," so that there are fewer goads to abandonment of my "best laid plans."  I will keep the same focus goal for the coming week, and try to breath before volunteering, or assenting to requests.

As I continue to try to endure, and not magnify, the stress of my life at this stage, I am helped by others' suggestions and outlooks.  This past week, I followed the recommendation of my yoga teacher, and read Rick Hanson's Buddha's Brain:  The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom, item 2, in red, on the list above.  My rapid response assessment this morning--as I prepare to rush out the door to a family birthday breakfast, followed by a protest rally, office time and an afternoon of child care, a birthday dinner and movie, and a few other things I'm going to try to cram in--is that reading this book was the most important thing I did last week.  I will write more about it later, but obviously its subject pertains to my never-ending battle for . . .

And now, I'm off to try to put into practice some of what I learned.