Taking some "me" time

Sometimes, I just can’t do it all.

I try. I try very hard. Most of my friends say that I’m the busiest person they know – and I really like it that way. I love bouncing from one thing to the next – from a long run to brunch to an off-Broadway show to a yoga class to dinner with my Dad to my best friend’s apartment for a movie (that is my actual plan for Sunday at the moment… you can call me crazy in the comments). But sometimes, my planning makes me a little too big for my britches.

Last week, I finished up my project in Kansas City, and wasn’t yet staffed to a new one. Consultants and long time readers of this blog know what that means: THE BEACH! Okay, so I don’t actually get to go to the beach, but what I do get is almost as nice: a week working from home, and typically working on fairly interesting stuff (points of view, white papers, etc). I knew that my workload would be light, so I also decided to use the time to catch up on everything I’ve been neglecting. Since I’m a list maker by nature, small wonder that by Sunday I was already teeming with ideas:

1. Paint my living room a new fun color: spring green. (At least as an accent wall… an entire living room that’s bright green might be a bit much).

2. Do my laundry, which I haven’t done since… November? Ew. Also, ridiculous that I still have drawerfuls of clean clothes. Which brings me to…

3. Clean out my closets/dressers. And this time, also clean out the corner of my bedroom that currently has bags of clothes to sell on eBay / donate to Housing Works. That stuff has sat there long enough!

4. Make some sort of “vision board” for my bedroom. Not necessarily with creepy “perfect man” stuff like that psycho on the Bachelor a few seasons ago, but more about general goals I’m working toward: PRing in a marathon, losing weight, reconnecting with friends, building a brand at work, etc. That would be great to keep me motivated!

My list goes on with various cleaning tasks around the apartment, various banks/doctors/etc to call and errands to run, mail to read and respond to… you get the point. And in between all of this, I also wanted to fit in lots of time to exercise, eat healthy, catch up with friends, and, of course, work.

Never. Going. To. Happen.

My workload these past few days has actually been pretty busy. It turns out that I have been doing such a good job in the last year or so that everyone wants me staffed to their engagements and helping out with their side projects (I guess that’s not a bad thing). So I’ve been running around like a chicken with my head cut off doing research on customer strategy, organizing a pricing summit, writing/coordinating a segmentation POV, and interviewing with various clients for my next official role. While I’ve spent the last few days in bed, it’s been chained to my laptop and answering emails well into the night around all of these commitments. Not fun!

So tonight, when I was really looking forward to an interval training class followed by fro yo with my friends? I did what was not the fun thing, but the right thing: I canceled. After nearly falling asleep on the train coming home from visiting my awesome friends over at Greatist this afternoon, I realized that I am trying to do too much, and I’m not giving myself any “me” time. I love all my activities and my friends, but I also need some time to go to bed early. To read a book (not just while on the subway). To watch TV. And just to do whatever I want to do in the moment without regard for plans or scheduling or anything else.

I would like to say much more and expound upon the virtues of rest… but I have already had a glass of wine, and in my current exhausted state, that is enough to pretty much knock me out. Night, y’all!