Yawn

September 14, 2011 Yawn

The hardest thing about getting up at 6:15 in the morning and immediately beginning to work is that by 4 pm, you have worked for 10 hours and you are so tired you just want to lie on the floor a little, just a little, and sleep for a few minutes, but you know if you do that then you will not be able to get (fill in the blank) done and then what will happen? The world will blow up.

In 2012, I am setting groundrules. Rules like not taking on 40+ weddings a year (dear God, help me right now when we are looking at 10 huge events in the next three weeks), not overextending myself, not answering the phone or email past 6 instead of my 8 pm rule now.  I am going to revise the fact that I have to steal time away from my work calendar in order to have a small social life, and that the hours spent work free (ha-ha) are really the 45 minutes before I fall asleep at night, and then I have nightmares about the to do lists, and the things left undone, or the proposals yet to be finished, or the emails i’ve not answered…

I could say that I’d be happier if I had an assistant, but that wouldn’t work. I’d be happier if I had a clone. I’d definitely be more productive, and I’d probably whine less. But I have a hard time allocating (based on a secret belief that no one is going to do the job the way I want it to be done).  I have a hard time letting someone else take over and be happy with the end result. For me, that means working for 12 hours a day on the days we don’t have weddings and working even more than that on the weekend,  of being perpetually exhausted, and wondering, absently, if I’m this tired at 32 what will it be like when I’m 40? 50?

Back to the 2012 groundrules. I have lots of plans. I am hoping these plans can actually happen this year. I am pretty sure that some of my plans are going to really make people mad, or think I’ve broken my brain. But I’m really, really, really tired of being exhausted. I’m tired of people not understanding why I can’t go to their 8 o’clock dinner party (because if I did, at 10, I’d be asleep in my soup because I have to go to bed at 10 during the week to just survive the weekends). I’m tired of feeling selfish when I get a pedicure because it forces me to relax, and yet I still make it a point to answer each.and every. email that comes in while sitting in that chair. I confess to being a workaholic, because if you don’t work it won’t get done, and if it doesn’t get done then your business fails.

This is such a rant, I know, but the past weeks have really been trying. It’s a crazy time, a time I love, but right now I’m feeling the burn on several levels. I know it will pass, I do, but I need to transcribe my feelings so that when 2012 rolls around and I’m feeling all optomistic and forgetting the 12+ hour day burn, I will read this and remember that I need ground rules. I need boundaries. I need to let go, a little, of trying to be perfect and trying to make everyone happy. Because ultimately, I end up feeling really tired, really fragile, and like I do right now– like I’ll pop if I don’t write all these feelings out.

As I hesitate to publish this (as though not to sound whiny and complainy about doing a job I love to death), I figure it’s a good thing. It’s like internet therapy: putting these ideas out into the universe so positive things can come back in. I don’t want you to think, dear reader, that I for any reason am complaining about being busy– I am blessed and thankful to be busy. I just need to learn how to better manage my busy-ness so that it doesn’t take such a chunk out of my soul. I am sure I’ll figure that out, right?

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Tags: i work too much so I am going to complain about it

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