In the Pause

I'll admit. I'm a procrastinator. If I'm honestly telling you my story, it has to come out. One of my favorite movies as a child was Annie, probably because of the song "Tomorrow". My favorite line from Gone with the Wind? "I'll think about that tomorrow. I just can't deal with it today."

That procrastination, though, can get me in trouble, sometimes. I wish I had a dollar for every last minute paper I've had to write, project I've had to complete, email I've had to send...

where I write furiously until my hand cramps (because I still have to write papers free-hand and then type them).

And at times like those... or times like today when I have a student in my office and emails to answer and a lecture to develop and a poster to present in 15 minutes that I start to smother down.

That little voice starts whispering "You're not good enough. What are you even trying to do? You can't juggle it all."

And sometimes, a lot of the time, I succumb to it. I listen and allow myself to become even more overwhelmed.

This evening, as I was driving home, I thought about the last 90 days challenge I'm half-heartedly participating in... (half-heartedly because one of the things to do is to drink 1/2 your weight in ounces of water and I'm pretty much floating through the day, and another part is to get up early and we all know how that goes because there is nothing like sleeping after the snooze button... see? I even procrastinate getting out of bed! ) Part of that is being intentional and figuring out your priorities in life...which I have been trying to do for all of my adulthood unsuccessfully. I mean, I know what my priorities are, but I don't always act on them.

And I thought of how in the hustle and bustle of the mundane... as one writer called it, the tyranny of the urgent, that occurs as we are writing our stories every day, so often that feeling of being overwhelmed can be solved with one act.

When I was working on my DNP, and I was feeling that time crunch in finishing papers, I would often get overwhelmed and get writer's block. I'd rewrite the same paragraph over and over, scratching through and rewording...

until I got up and took a break. Took a walk. laughed with Caleb. Read a little.

Because in the pause, that's where we breath in new life.

In the pause, we can become refreshed, ready for the next chapter of the story.

Writing using a prompt from Five Minute Fridays (although this one took longer than five minutes) for the write31 day challenge. Today's prompt? Pause...