Keeping busy, staying happy

Initially, it seemed like such a good idea. Since Holly was off to spend the weekend with her cousins, it was the perfect time for Rick and me to bring Tim and three of his friends up to Maine for Tim’s belated birthday celebration.  Both kids would have something special to do; neither one would feel left out of the fun.

But as the weekend approached, I began to suspect I’d taken on a little bit too much at one time. My mind was a jumble of details. Had I submitted the paperwork to the airlines for Holly to fly as an Unaccompanied Minor? Had I researched the ferry schedule in case Tim and his friends wanted to go biking on one of the Casco Bay islands? What time would we need to leave for the airport to get Holly checked in for her Friday morning flight? How many quarts of milk and orange juice would four 16-year-old boys consume in 48 hours? Did I have the two forms of ID I’d need for expedited airport security? Did Rick have the access card to the Portland garage?

By Friday morning, I thought my head would burst open and all the details would come rolling out. Just get through this weekend, I coached myself. Just get Holly safely off to DC; just keep the boys well-fed and reasonably supervised; and then you can de-stress.

And whether because of, or in spite of, my stressing over all the details, everything went beautifully. Holly had a wonderful time visiting her cousins. Tim and his friends were boisterous and cheerful, and much to my surprise, there was still food left in the pantry when their weekend in Maine ended.

Okay, I told myself when I woke on Monday morning. Now you can stop worrying about the weekend. It’s behind you and it was a success.

And then I remembered that Thanksgiving is in ten days and I still haven’t ordered our turkey (or the chicken or duck that we’ll need to make Tim’s beloved Turducken). Also the annual gathering Rick and I host every year for my high school crowd is next Monday and I should start planning for that. Also we need to choose a date for the annual holiday cookie exchange, which usually falls the first week in December. Also I should start working on our Christmas card.

It’s the nature of life as we currently live it that there aren’t really days when nothing needs to be planned or assessed or overseen. And sometimes it’s stressful. Especially at this time of year. I try to remind myself it’s all supposed to be fun, and if the stress of any individual undertaking outweighs the fun, I shouldn’t do it.  After all, we don’t have to host the annual high school gathering. We don’t even have to host Thanksgiving. And we certainly don’t have to send out Christmas cards.

But we will do all of those things, because ultimately, the fun does outweigh the stress, or the traditions wouldn’t exist.

In this morning’s paper, I read an article about homeless women in Boston who are now sleeping in parks and under bridges because the shelter in which they were living abruptly closed due to infrastructural problems.

“That’s what stress looks like,” I reminded myself. “Carrying around your belongings in a cardboard box because you have no place else to put them. Trips to visit cousins….belated birthday celebrations….holiday parties….holiday poems….those are not stress. Those are recreation.”

Of course they are, and of course any one of the women in the article would happily (and probably quite capably) take on any one of my sources of anxiety.

Have fun, I reminded myself. The holiday season is beginning.

And I will. I’ll remember that the stress and anxiety are trivial compared to the joy of getting together with family and friends. And it will all be wonderful, just as it is every year. 

Working backwards toward peace of mind

As is so often the case, preparing to leave on a vacation this week has been somewhat stress-inducing, despite the fact that I try to keep a sense of perspective. We’re scheduled to board a plane early tomorrow morning, and by midweek that thought had become a source of anxiety rather than the beacon of excitement that an impending family trip should be. But I really wanted to leave for the airport with peace of mind.

So I tried to figure out what peace of mind would look like, and then worked backwards.

And once I broke it down that way, I discovered that some of the tasks I had in mind to accomplish before leaving contributed to the peace-of-mind goal and others, somewhat surprisingly, didn’t. Cleaning the kitchen is important to me; picking up the dry cleaning that we’ll need the week after we get back really isn’t. In fact, I realized, my highest priorities as far as achieving pre-vacation peace of mind fall rather neatly into two categories: being deadline-free with work and leaving a clean and tidy house.

Working backwards toward peace of mind is different from simply writing a To Do list, which is something I tend to do already on a daily basis. The steps toward peace of mind reflect things that will truly make the difference for me in whether or not I start vacation with a sense of serenity. When I write To Do lists, I tend to focus on everything I think should happen, regardless of their intrinsic importance. I tell myself I should vacuum. I should balance the checkbook. I should get the car washed. And so on.

Getting the car washed was a good idea, I realized, but wouldn’t really affect the quality of my vacation. Finishing some work assignments before we leave rather than bringing work with me, on the other hand, will make a tangible difference in how I feel about departing. Knowing that I’m bringing along a suitcase full of clean clothes matters to me, but knowing that all the clean laundry back home has been folded and put away really won’t matter much once I’m halfway across the country.

Now, just 24 hours from departure, I feel like I’m almost there. One of the two articles I wanted to complete before leaving has been written and submitted; the other is halfway done and should be easy to finish later today. I’ve taken trash to the transfer station and cleared off the countertops. I’ve run all the laundry we’ll need for our trip.

A lot can change in twenty-four hours when you’re preparing for vacation – more assignments could unexpectedly come in, for example, or the need for some vital household repair could crop up – but in general, I think this is going to work. My family doesn’t go on vacation often; the fact that we’re all heading out together this week is a big deal for us. And leaving with a sense of serenity is a big deal for me as well. I easily get buried under household tasks, writing assignments, and administrivia, but this time I feel like I’m on top of it. Which makes leaving for vacation an even more joyful and exciting prospect than I anticipated.

Busy day

By seven thirty last night, I felt like a character in a Richard Scarry picture book. Except much sweatier and with less colorful clothes. But just as busy busy busy. And when it was time to leave to take Holly to her evening library program, I was very sad to wave goodbye to my uneaten dinner.

After I’d worked frantically to complete an article about Fourth of July observances throughout the region, a morning phone interview for which I’d slotted a typical 45 minutes started fifteen minutes late and lasted an hour and a quarter, so by the time I hung up it was noon, and I’d promised Holly a trip to the drugstore before the morning was over (I knew my best bet at getting her to apply sunscreen on a regular basis was if I let her pick out the sunscreen herself, a decision she would doubtlessly base on the color and shape of the bottle).

Back from our CVS run, I made lunch for her and Tim, and then it was time to bring Holly to a friend’s house for the afternoon. I tried not to think too much about Rick’s dire comment that the warning light on the Prius indicated that one of the tires was leaking air and would soon be flat. Just one more trip, I mentally urged the car, and then I promise our next stop will be the mechanic.

But Holly’s friend had just moved to North Chelmsford, and while Chelmsford borders on Carlisle, North Chelmsford borders on Lowell. Needless to say, with my notorious sense of direction, I left North Chelmsford and headed the wrong way; soon I was crossing out of Dracut and into Methuen, rather than out of South Chelmsford and into Carlisle as I’d hoped.

Through Lowell, around the UMass campus, through Dracut, into Methuen, turn around retrace steps, and finally I was on the highway heading toward our mechanic in Littleton. One wrong turn in Littleton, easily corrected at a gas station, and finally I was there…with fifteen minutes to spare before I needed to pick Tim up back at home and bring him to his Little League game in Arlington. I explained my plight to the service department. “The tire pressure warning light is on, but I got lost on the way here and I have no time at all,” I bemoaned.

The technician looked up my records. “You got lost coming from Carlisle to Littleton?” he asked.

“No, I was in Chelmsford but ended up in Methuen.”

“Well, you can’t keep driving around on that tire,” he said. “We’ll get to it as quickly as we can.”

I called Tim and told him to fill his water bottle, put on his uniform, assemble his bat bag and be ready when I returned because we’d have to go straight to the game. I sat on pins and needles in the waiting room, wreaked with anxiety, trying to tell myself again and again that there was simply nothing to do but wait it out. I reminded myself that this was trivial: a car repair, a baseball game; nothing to develop a migraine over. But still, I knew what Rick would say: poor planning. Somehow I should have figured out how to line up the whole day more effectively.

The technician called me over. The tire was repaired, and it was cheap, which was a welcome surprise. I drove to Carlisle, picked up Tim, drove to Arlington, and dropped him off at the field nine minutes before first pitch. The players are supposed to arrive 45 minutes early for warm-ups, but since Rick is normally in charge of baseball transportation for Tim, this was the first time all season – actually probably ever – that he’d arrived late, so I knew he’d be forgiven this once.

Home at last, but I hadn’t yet run my daily mile, so out I went to do that. With a half-hour left before I needed to meet up with Holly for an evening program at the library, I made my go-to quick-meal recipe: pasta with sautéed garlic, cherry tomatoes, arugula and walnuts. Just as I was about to take my first bite of pasta, the phone rang: it was the man who had taken over Old Home Day pie contest duties for me this year, after I decided that I needed a break from that annual responsibility, and he had a lot of questions. I cast longing glances at my plate of pasta as I explained how to prepare the tasting plates for the judges and why I thought the final score should be averaged rather than cumulative. “It’s a pie contest,” I wanted to tell him. “Just do it however you want. It really doesn’t matter.” But I answered his questions as well as I could and then left for the library.

We got home a little before nine and I had time then to eat. The tire was repaired; Tim’s baseball game was over; Holly had enjoyed the library program; my Fourth of July article was filed. Busy day, just like in a Richard Scarry book. But it all ended well. And the pasta was absolutely delicious.

Seven steps to stress-free; one step to joy

Amazon.com thinks it knows what I should read. And so it regularly gives me recommendations. I understand where these recommendations come from – most of the time. They come from an algorithm that relates books I’ve not purchased to books I have purchased, or at least viewed. Or else it makes connections based on gifts I’ve ordered for other people that have no relation to my own interests at all: for example, three years ago I bought my brother-in-law a home-brewing kit and I’m still getting recommendations from Amazon that I buy “Make Moonshine by Midnight” and similar quick-help guides to homemade spirits. My son likes fantasy fiction, so plenty of covers featuring dragons and knights march across my Amazon home page. And, like a lot of people, I took a quick peek last week to see what all the fuss over Amazon’s suddenly questionable sales standards involved, so I will apparently be getting recommendations for how-to books that, if the instructions within were followed, would probably land me in jail.

But sometimes I’ll see a recommendation that is neither quite so off-the-wall as the moonshine handbooks nor quite so obviously targeted as a new novel by a writer whose last book I bought. And then I just look at the title and say, “You think I should read that? Yeah, maybe. I suppose it might make sense…”

This was the case when earlier this week Amazon’s recommendation for me was “Addicted to Stress: A Woman's 7 Step Program to Reclaim Joy and Spontaneity In Life.”

“Addicted to stress?” I mused, puzzled. “I’m not addicted to stress. I’m not even that stressed.” Sure, I have plenty of plates to spin at once, from work assignments to the kids’ activities to volunteer tasks to household upkeep to planning for the upcoming holidays. But stressed? Not overly. And, moreover, addicted to stress? I don’t think so.

Yet the title made me wonder. Seven steps to reclaim joy and spontaneity in life? On the one hand, that sounded like a lot of meticulously prescribed steps in order to reach spontaneity. (Follow all of these steps but then forget you ever followed them, because the important thing is to reach this state without trying.) On the other hand, joy and spontaneity in life? Seven steps seems like a rather small price to pay for that desirable outcome.

I couldn’t quite decide whether I was truly stressed or just busy, and I couldn’t decide whether I was lacking joy and spontaneity or, like most people, just have a few unsatisfied wishes and a few unmet goals. Then I received my “Word for the Day” email from an organization called A Network for Grateful Living. This isn’t really a word in the sense of a vocabulary word; it’s a quote. And on that particular day the quote was this: “O how I laugh when I think of my vague indefinite riches. No run on my bank can drain it, for my wealth is not possession but enjoyment.”

That’s by Henry David Thoreau. He did not use the word stress. He did not suggest seven steps. Just as he went to the woods to live deliberately, he made joy a simple thing too: “my wealth is not possession but enjoyment.” Somehow that quote told me I didn’t need seven steps, or a book, to find my joy. I just needed to remember these essential words from Thoreau: joy, the concept as well as the word itself, is to be found inside of enjoyment. Remembering to take pleasure in all we have, rather than stressing out about all we need to do, is the best stress-reliever we will ever find. No seven steps. No steps at all. Just remembering to be joyful is joy enough, and I was so glad to be reminded of these words at just that moment.

Stress....and resolution

It’s fair to say I woke up yesterday morning about as stressed as I can remember being in a long time. And yet I knew I had nothing serious to worry about. Nothing life-or-death, or geopolitical.

Still, the stress dogged me throughout the day. Even my two-mile run was arduous because I couldn’t relax into it; I could only worry about what I needed to do when I got back.

The problem was really just that this week represents the conflation of so many end-of-school-year responsibilities for my various roles as a school volunteer, along with my usual robust work load as a freelance writer. And everything always seems more rushed after a three-day weekend. Yesterday was the annual Teachers’ Appreciation Luncheon at our school, for which I was co-chair this year; tomorrow is Walk to School Day, for which I am also co-chair. Unrelated to either of those, Holly’s teacher had sent home a batch of handwritten stories from the second graders that I had earlier agreed to type up, and I had a slew of work deadlines beginning yesterday and extending through the week.

So I worried and stressed and felt ridiculously anxious about it all.

For one thing, I’d hustled out of town for the holiday weekend leaving a trail of loose ends, or so it seemed yesterday morning. Several of the parents who were contributing food or drinks to the Teachers’ Appreciation Luncheon had asked to drop items off at my house Tuesday morning, and I couldn’t remember if I’d responded to all of them. I hadn’t even looked at the list my co-chair had sent me last week of items I should bring with me when I headed up to the school to start setting up. I had a monthly newspaper column due for one publication and my weekly community briefs due to another publication; I was a day late submitting some edits to a client; I hadn’t even started a writing project that’s due today. I still didn’t have nearly enough adult volunteers for Walk to School Day: I’d already promised we could cover four major walking routes and five crosswalks, and I had about half the manpower I needed for that, with less than 48 hours left to recruit.

Equally problematic, yesterday’s afterschool plans for my 7-year-old – at the same time I was supposed to be hosting the luncheon – had fallen through, so she was going to have to come with me, an idea to which she’d already stated her adamant opposition. I was pretty sure I’d have a full-scale mutiny from her when I told her again she had to do it.

So I worried.

But I couldn’t sit still and worry; things needed to be done. And as I launched head first into the many tasks of the day, it all began working itself out. Things were falling into place. Inexplicably, when I stopped fretting about it and just moved along, it turned out I had less to worry about than I thought.

People began arriving at my house to drop off luncheon items, just as we’d planned via email on Friday; I thought I’d left questions about it unanswered, but everyone seemed to be finding their way to my door. With ninety minutes at my desk before I needed to start setting up for the luncheon at school, I managed to submit both the column and the community briefs. I finally looked at the list of kitchen items I’d been asked to bring with me, and it was just what I thought – index cards, plastic wrap, cake servers -- nothing extra, nothing hard to find. My husband’s afternoon meeting was canceled and he decided to come home for the day at noon, so Holly wouldn’t have to come with me after all; she could be at home with him. My friend Leigh called to ask me a question about the luncheon, and when I let slip that the luncheon was working out okay but it was Walk to School Day for which I was desperate for help, she said she could easily help out that morning.

The luncheon was a success: a stunning array of delicious foods. The teachers were delighted by our efforts, representing the culinary talents and generosity of dozens of parents; and the dessert my mother made was the most popular dish there, which made me proud. My mom and I have a long history with the Teacher Appreciation Luncheon; when I was in grade school myself, I used to help her cook for this same event, so she said it was only fair that she help me this time around.

It’s true that I had to catch up on a lot of work once I got back from the school, having spent three hours cleaning up from the lunch. And I was back at my desk again after the kids went to bed, struggling a little more to meet one last deadline. I’ll have a ton of work to do today. But that’s okay, because today there’s nothing else on my calendar for the day except work.

I’ll catch up. I’ll stop worrying. And maybe next time the duties pile up like this I’ll worry a little less, remembering how as soon as I stopped tormenting myself with anxieties, the tasks seemed almost magically to take care of themselves.