These past few days, I´ve been really busy at work and at home. Thankfully, most of it has been "good busy": exciting projects, interesting conversations, meetups with friends and family activities.

But it´s still very busy, considering I´m a rather quiet person (or at least, I instinctively seek peace and quiet). And it hasn´t been just a few days; more like weeks, even months... With no sign of easing off anytime soon.

Does this sound familiar to you?

On the one hand, I´m glad, since I find it much easier to stay active when there are "things to get done". On the other hand, I get the feeling that I´ve been waiting to get peace and quiet for months, and they don´t seem to be coming, so I´d like to slow down a bit to be able to keep a sustainable pace.

This morning, thinking about this, I remembered a phrase I used to resonate a lot with years ago; one that I choose to interpret today in a totally different way. It turns out I had already written an article on this quote, but I don´t care, I´m going to show it to you again:

God put me on this earth to accomplish a certain number of things. Right now I am so far behind that I will never die.

Bill Watterson

(By the way, I never thought of researching the author, it turns out Bill Watterson is the creator of Calvin and Hobbes, a comic strip that´s been on my reading list for years; hopefully one day I´ll decide to go ahead and borrow the books from Fredi and the girls).

What do you think of this quote? I love it; I find this kind of subtle humour very smart. And way back when, it perfectly reflected my constant feeling of lagging behind, of spending my days running around getting things done and yet never getting to be fully up to date. Just thinking about everything I "had to do" was exhausting...

Today, fifteen years later and having a few more tools in my backpack, I decide to think about this topic in a way that gives me energy instead of taking it away:

• Yes, I do lots of things every day, but I do them because I choose to (haven´t we spoken already about the difference between "having to" and "choosing to"? Well, there´s our topic for next week).
• I´m no longer trying to do it all, because I´ve realized it´s just impossible.. I´ve learned to be more flexible and modify my plans according to the needs of the day and my priorities (more on priorities here)
• Looking after myself and keeping my battery at full load is a mandatory element of my priorities list (when this is not true, things go from bad to worse).
• Many of the things I do I feel excited about, and for the ones I´m not too keen on, remembering their purpose and why they´re important helps me get motivated.

Am I more productive nowadays, thanks to all this? To be honest, I don´t know; I´m not sure whether I´m achieving more or less than I used to fifteen years ago; my life has changed a lot since then. But I do know that I´m suffering way less, and I´m enjoying the journey way more, even though I still feel tired sometimes.

And what about falling behind? That´s always relative: what or who am I comparing myself to? In 99% of cases, an imaginary perfect version of myself that I´m never going to be able to reach... I´ll probably never be able to switch off that little inner self-critical voice completely, but what I can do is become aware of how unrealistic it is sometimes, and realize it doesn´t always deserve my attention.

Anyway, regardless of that, what this quote inspires in me as of today is a desire to live: there are many things I want to do, many projects I want to tackle, many goals I want to achieve, many meetups I want to enjoy. And that´s going to keep replenishing my vital energy (as long as God / the Universe agrees) to live for many, many years.