Posts Tagged ‘Organisation’

The paradox of delirium

Friday, December 18th, 2009

It is 2:46am and I am just sitting down to blog. One of my favourite songs from high school is playing on the radio and my kitchen and bathroom, despite 11 hours of work on them in the past 2 days, looks the same as they did on Tuesday.

I feel like I could run a marathon… well I guess this is how it would feel if I was ever ready to run a marathon. Which is unlikely. I think I would sooner birth an alien life form than be capable of a marathon, but I digress. My point is I am not tired. Instead of weary I am feeling that particular kind of restlessness you feel eating breakfast before a big trip – eating faster won’t achieve anything other than indigestion, but none the less you are chomping at the bit to get things underway. I know I have worked because my feet are sore and my back is aching. My skin has a beautiful glow to it, that on closer inspection is just dust particles stuck to the film of perspiration (yes ladies perspire, they don’t sweat) on my skin. I am finding it difficult to focus, as the paragraph above demonstrates beautifully, but I am not tired.

This is delirium.

Delirium is terrible and wonderful state that I haven’t experienced for a while. I remember as a teenager reaching this state just before the hangover kicked in after a HUGE night where nobody slept until after the sun came up. I remember delirium overcoming me after crying until the tears ran dry and the pillow felt like a sponge. I remember this feeling creeping in after a weekend where the only times my partner and I ventured out of the bedroom was for water and to go to the bathroom. (Yes, love really can sustain you. For a few days at least.) This is how it felt the night my son was born.

Delirium allows you to function, but without focus.

Your conscious mind is sleeping on the job (it just puts the body on autopilot) and your whimsical, emotional, symbolic unconscious mind has control.

Perhaps that is why I found myself almost tearful looking at my tidy kitchen. Very little has changed, but every single object has been removed, cleaned, vetted and returned. Everything has a place and a purpose. My favourite little corner of the world (my kitchen) could not be more perfect.

Lesson: Inner peace is most often not achieved through meditation (unless you are a monk). The rest of us find peace in the ordinary.

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Posted in Blogging, Life, Personal Development | 1 Comment »

The bugs pushing to a fresh start to 2010

Wednesday, December 16th, 2009

I HATE bugs. You may have picked up on that, since they led to my downfall in the hornet incident. I understand that insects, in general, are the basis of all ecosystems and that life on earth would grind to a halt without them. I just don’t want them in my house!!!

I lose all sense of rationality and common sense in the presence of 6 legged foes. I have been known to vacuum up ants, concoct herbal pesticides for fleas, leave out vinegar for flies, rub window sills with tea tree oil and sprinkle doorways with cinnamon. All the while chanting, mentally or aloud, “Die, little demons, DIE!” I guess I understand why I have been called a ‘White Witch’.

In light of my passionate hate for creepy crawlies, living squarely in the heart of cockroach territory only one solitary block from the beach wasn’t the best decision I ever made. I love the lifestyle but HATE the neighbours, so this week this natural earth mother threw up her arms in surrender and called the fumigators. I simply cannot let the neighbours become housemates.

Fumigation to me has always seemed the expensive and easy route. You go out and let the professional take care of it. The most you need to do is sweep up the carnage in the days afterwards. Except the customer service professional told me I must empty all cupboards, expose all the skirting boards & clear all the benches. In short, I am packing up my living room, bathroom and kitchen into boxes. A daunting task. Especially 1 week out from Christmas when there is 2 batches of gingerbread dough in the fridge waiting to be baked. Doh!

If something comes between me and baking it must have a silver lining. So I am looking on this as a clean out of the old in preparation for the new. A delayed spring clean and hopefully a beginning to my minimalist lifestyle. Bring on 2010.

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Schedule your inspiration

Friday, December 11th, 2009

It is your day off. You have been looking forward to this time for weeks. You have a list as long as your arm of relaxing things that you will spend these precious hours doing. You realise half way through the day that it is not possible to get everything done and your day will be anything but relaxing. You rush from errand to appointment and back again ending at home utterly exhausted, wishing that you had just picked up take away on your way home from work, because that (or getting a root canal) would have been less stressful. Does this ever happen to you?

This phenomena is born of two things:

  1. We grossly underestimate how long it takes to ‘do’ something
  2. We focus too much on the exhalation (the execution of a task) and forget the inspiration (the space between tasks)

I often plan to do something before I go to bed, like have a cup of tea and some chocolate or give myself a mini facial or read or write a blog or whatever. Two nights a week, if I am absolutely on fire, I will do one of those things before I go to bed. Instead I usually pack up the baby’s toys, pack the dishwasher and clean the kitchen benches, organise lunches for tomorrow, write my other half a lovely note for him to wake up to, put a load of washing on, balance the budget or any of the millions of mundane necessary things that I never include in my schedule.

This isn’t simply a Mum thing either. I know I used to plan meetings back to back when I worked in finance, giving myself 5 minutes to go to the bathroom and re-fill the water jug, only to find that the clients were early, my staff needed to run some issues past me, the printer was stuffed and the documents hadn’t printed and that I had a million emails to address.

Planning and scheduling is important. I think it is impossible minimise stress without knowing, for the most part, what needs to be done and allocating time for it. But so many of us don’t schedule to our priorities and only schedule a fraction of our tasks, but allocate them the majority of our time.

Lesson: To live with a sense of tranquility schedule the inspiration as well as the exhalation. And as any good yoga teacher will tell you; if you want to relax the inspiration should be as long as the exhalation.

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Posted in Coaching, Life, Personal Development | No Comments »