A few months ago, I read this fantastic book:

Have you read it? Or anything by Sarah Knight? I love her. Yes, she swears a lot (hence my attraction to her work) but she also gives great advice. And although I loved her last book more (The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F*ck), this book came at the right time. A time when I was feeling out of control and needed to get a grip. Unfortunately, it didn’t work, though. Maybe I need to read it again?

Last week at the library, we had a fantastic speaker by the name of Janie Downey Maxwell. She has a blog called Organizational Habits where she discusses what one can do to become more organized. Her talk was called “Organizational Zen” and she not only talked about tools to become more organized (planner vs. calendar) but also how one can find a bit of peace while becoming organized.

I’ve been anxious to hear what Janie had to say. I’ve never felt more out of control than I have this past month. Last week I had an appointment with a surgeon (Dr. Huang) to talk about my pancreas. I didn’t fully understand why I was seeing him before my new gastroenterologist. Huang wants to do a CT scan of my pancreas so he can see it when it’s not screaming at me. Totally smart and completely understandable. I may have a cyst or a pseudocyst or possibly something else sitting on the tail of my pancreas. He very subtly mentioned the rare case of pancreatic cancer, but said there’s no reason to worry right now because they don’t know anything yet and I seem fine at the moment.

Huh.

Ok. I wasn’t too horrified…until I left his office. I went to take one of his business cards and realized that not only this doctor, but everyone in this office were surgical oncologists.  Well….fuck. I’m just glad I didn’t know that BEFORE my appointment.

So…between my health issues and attempting to “fix” Mom’s finances, all of my goals for this year have gone right down the tubes. Our spending moratorium hasn’t gone well since the end of April. We’ve helped my mom out a bit, then had an unexpected car repair and dentist appointment, so out came the credit card from my little hiding place. My goal of running a half marathon again this year is going to go on the back burner. This body just isn’t having it.

After listening to Janie, I decided to finally put forward something I should have done months ago. I often feel overwhelmed by my range of responsibilities, don’t you? I was afraid to write everything down because if I saw it all in black and white then this feeling of drowning would overcome me and a breakdown would be inevitable.

Yet…I’m doing all of it anyway, so why not have a slightly better handle on this crazy thing called life?

Meet my new pencil and planner:

It is time to yank up my big girl panties and stop freaking out and just do it for fuck’s sake. Write it all down.  Every appointment I take my mother to, every appointment I take my son to, and yes, even every appointment I need to take myself to–write it down. The dates to pay my mother’s bills, the dates to pay my bills, the dates to clean my mother’s house–write them down. When to run, when to walk, when to breathe—write it all the fuck down.

But I want to write down the fun stuff, too. The hikes in Acadia National Park I plan to do with my son, the ice cream we plan to eat, the anniversary dinner with my husband, the mini vacation in Bar Harbor, the beach day with friends, my friend’s wedding in New Hampshire. I have to write all of that down, too, because honestly? All that other stuff–the doctor visits, the cleaning, the bill paying–that is what life is really made of.  That’s the shit we *have* to do, but doing the fun stuff is how we are able to carry on and do everything else in life that’s difficult and messy and just plain awful. And I have to be able to see those fun things in my planner. I have to know that all of this hard stuff is not *just* what life is. It has to be more than that, right?

It has to.