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.
Pero no deja de ser mucho lío, para mí que soy más bien tranquila (o que institntivamente busco tranquilidad). Y no han sido solamente unos días, han sido más bien semanas, o meses… Y no tiene pinta de que vaya a aflojar pronto.
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).
¿Qué te parece la frase? A mí me encanta, me parece de un humor muy sutil y muy inteligente. Y en tiempos, reflejaba perfectamente mi sensación constante de no llegar, de pasarme el día corriendo de un lado para otro haciendo cosas y aun así no conseguir nunca estar al día. Sólo pensar en todo lo que «tenía que hacer» me resultaba agotador…
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.
¿Y lo de ir con retraso? Eso siempre es relativo: ¿con qué o con quién me estoy comparando? El 99% de las veces, con una versión imaginaria y perfecta de mí misma que nunca voy a poder alcanzar… Seguramente nunca pueda llegar a desactivar del todo esa vocecita interna de la autocrítica, pero lo que sí puedo es darme cuenta de lo poco realista que es a veces, y de que no siempre se merece que le haga mucho caso.
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.