The Overwhelm

Image via BU.edu

Last week...well, last week was rather.... Let's just say that last week was challenging. On a multitude of levels.

First, the devastation in Japan. Earthquake, tsunami and the threat of nuclear meltdown. How does one wrap one's head around all of that? I cannot. All I can do is give what I can. A small donation. Prayers. Hope. And that will likely be on a repeat cycle for the foreseeable.

*********

There are times I must remind myself of this project, of putting elegance into my life each day. That becomes more difficult during times of chaos -- and chaos takes on a very relative meaning these days. Finding the time, the patience, the discipline to imbue elegance into a situation that is anything but can be quite the travail. But that's what I signed up for when this began. And it has changed my life in really wonderful ways. Still, finding a way to keep up with what was started is an ongoing challenge. There's a long list of things I wanted to have done by now. I wonder if I will ever get to it. This means something to me, and I wish I could focus on it more. But there always seems to be more to do.

*********

"I know this sounds silly," a friend said on voicemail, "but, as I was standing in the middle of my room -- which is a disaster, by the way -- trying to figure out how to tackle it, I really, really wished you were here...not to help me clean, of course. Just tell me how to start."

I laughed when I heard her message, understanding the week she was having, as well as the one I was attempting to "enjoy". I'm not so much the Queen of Clean as I am the Empress of Overwhelm. I'm sure you can relate to that title as well. I rarely, if ever, get to enjoy doing one thing at a time. It's an endless multitask. Deadlines perpetually loom causing less pressing things pile up until those begin to seem insurmountable, too. Sadly, I've grown accustomed to this. But, even though it's familiar, inevitably, it throws me off balance and, sometimes, into a freefall.

Funnily, it's rarely the big stuff that topples me...it's all the little things that overwhelm me as they avalanche from the pile.

Last week was full of stress and pressure and time constraints and attempts at meeting everyone's expectations all the while attempting to lower them, if only to a human level. One of the joys of working with a startup company is that, when it all starts coming together, it all happens at once. Everything needs to happen now. As in right now, not tomorrow or next week, but the second you can get it done, and even that might not be soon enough. Adrenaline rushes are nice from time to time, but they do grow tiresome when they come so quickly that everything goes into a dizzying blur. All I could do was smile, take deep breaths, and bring chocolate to work.

And then the little things started falling by the wayside again.

The Guinness chocolate cake I intended to make for St. Patrick's Day was one of the misses; something I had been planning since January. St. Patrick's Day is one of my favorite holidays. Yes, I wear green, and drink Guinness, and love brown soda bread -- the kind I indulged in at Bewley's on Grafton Street. With my new convection oven and springform pan at the ready, I was so looking forward to making my first from-scratch cake. And a cake should be an easy thing to make, no? It doesn't take days and days to conjure up. It is, after all, cake. It was just another one of my PE projects that haven't come to fruition as I hoped or planned, which is just a little frustrating.

While work grew more hectic, my nights and weekends were dedicated to a rush rewrite on a screenplay the director wants to shoot in May. That forced another priority shift. The draft got done, but it delayed my tax preparation, which puts my relationship with one of my best friends, who is also my CPA, in jeopardy, because I always seem to send her my prep work around April 2nd. And, please, don't mention proper housecleaning.

Then the little things have piled up and they begin to feel insurmountable.

Walking out of an office of chaos and into a home of chaos makes it difficult to invoke any refinement or grace in any way. Ironically, it's in the midst of nut factory that we need the serenity of elegance most. The only solution is to do something that helps put things back into perspective. That might be as simple as making a cup of tea, or pulling out red linen napkins to spread on desk and lap to make a hasty lunch a tad more chic, or a last minute dinner out with a dear friend at a favorite haunt. For me, it was all of the above.

Like any storm, the chaos, too, does pass. Work is finding it's balance. My tax information went off to my beloved CPA in the mail today -- a personal best. The cake will happen soon enough. Perhaps I will make my own birthday cake this year. Stranger things have happened. The draft of the script was well received...only five pages of notes, and a meeting to squeeze in somewhere. I'm beginning to tackle things from Cast-Aside Mountain. Oh, and miracles of miracles, I'm back to waking up at five o'clock to fit in a morning workout...and, somehow, I'm also able to make my lunch and be on time for work.

The thing about making it through the overwhelm (yes, a new noun), is that it makes us more able, not less. We come out of it stronger and wiser, and, in a strange way, ready to take on more. It also makes us really want to go on vacation. Or, perhaps, that's just me. But that's way down the line on my to-do list.

*********

It can be overwhelming to see the unimaginable devastation that is happening around us. Sometimes, all we can do is send in a donation, a good thought or prayer. Sometimes, these situations help put our lives into perspective and make us less likely to take things for granted. Compassion, appreciation and love are epitomes of elegance.