Muir Woods, Winter Solstice 2010

I’ve got too much to do and too little time to do it.

Does that sound familiar?

I keep finding myself thinking these days how do people do this? Specifically, how do women do this? How do mothers do this? How do we keep all these balls in the air simultaneously? Talk about juggling. Life these days feels like juggling while balanced on one foot on one of those semi-circle exercise balls they have at the gym, while drinking a cup of coffee and changing a diaper.

Finding myself in a state of overwhelm is a cyclical phenomena for me. It used to be that I could track it monthly with my cycle. Ovulation = Overwhelm. At least it was predictable – all those Os smack dab in the middle of every 28 days. These days, I have one of those IUDs where you don’t get a period, so I don’t know my cycle anymore. I just know that things that felt (kinda sorta barely) manageable two days ago – BOOM! – today feel insurmountable.

Today I’ve not been able to find about seven different items in my house. On this shortest day of the year, as rain falls from gray skies, it feels like objects are playing hide and seek in the deep shadows, in the clutter on my black countertop, in the dark corners behind the baskets of toys and soccer balls. I could blame small hands grabbing and moving things. But I suspect this time it’s actually not the toddler’s fault.

And what about the clutter in my mind? The dark shadows and the corners that need a good airing? What is to be done about those?

I know I need to let go. Let go of the ever-growing stacks of papers that won’t be sorted anytime soon, the kindergarten artwork that will remain in its bag, the video that won’t make its way off the tiny video camera tape quite yet. In the big picture, none of that matters.

And yet today it does. All this clutter surrounding me, all this mean to want to should get to that sometime soon is looming in on me. All this busy-ness. All these lists. It’s probably not coincidence that, during the long, dark nights of winter, I always start to feel like the walls of my tiny house are closing in on me. Suddenly what often feels cozy strikes me as clausterphobic instead.

I’m ready for some mental and physical space around me, a clarity of vista, both internal and external. To step away from my life and gain a little perspective. I guess that’s the perfect space to be in as darkness descends on the longest night and the new year approaches.