Not done, but not burnt, either

Maybe I’m finally getting a clue.

Usually, if I don’t get things accomplished that I thought I would during the day, I become an ambulatory stress mill and end up either flogging myself into working absurdly late hours or getting knotted up with worry, sleeping badly and spending the next day ferociously meeting goals until I’m toast. And I don’t often discriminate between the real deadlines and the self-imposed ones.

So, yesterday, some things didn’t go right. I was hoping to get two separate sets of artist contracts signed, but one meeting got postponed by the artist and I had to cancel the second, in a distant location, because of snow (before Thanksgiving! Insupportable…). I also had a piece of consulting work I wanted to finish, but couldn’t because some necessary data hadn’t come in.

But for some reason, I didn’t sweat it this time. I know the contracts will get signed eventually. The data have started trickling in and I’ll be able to complete my draft today. I feel – comparatively – relaxed.

Can this be wisdom, at last? Well, I doubt it. More like fatigue, probably, or maybe just resignation – I have been learning the hard way that no matter how much you nudge and urge and jump up and down, it just takes forever to get things done, especially when other people are involved.

But whatever my reason for having it, I’m going to celebrate my strange mellowness. By the time you read this, I will have gone to bed before 2 a.m. for once and will, I hope, be resolutely not having a panic attack as I labor to get my consulting work done right and submitted on time.

It’s Friday. Thanksgiving is next week. If I keep breathing deeply and getting enough sleep, maybe I’ll even get through the holiday cooking and the two family birthday parties that bookend it without having my internal temperature soar as high as the turkey’s.

So let’s all take a lesson from Joe Walsh….