A Little "Whelmed"

I've got too much to do. Now, that in and of itself can hardly be considered news. But something just had to give. I'm feeling stressed by pressures coming from work, from writing (the manuscript is due in a hundred days and that scares the bejeezus out of me right now), from trying to keep a house at a level above "slovenly," and a dozen more besides. It's at this point that I've learned to look for signs of being "whelmed." (That's a level just before "overwhelmed" which is scary territory indeed - Overwhelmedland is the home of the headless chicken. Having been in that country a time or two, I can assure you I have no desire to have my passport stamped again.) At any rate, I'm displaying most of the signs of heading nowhere good, mentally speaking.

I had just enough sense to take a deep breath, a hot shower and then meditate a little while. Now, not everyone's comfortable with the idea of meditation - call it whatever you want. Prayer, alone time, anything will do. The weird thing is that I've often heard it said that prayer is talking to God and meditation is listening to God. I happen to believe that God talks to us all the time - often through the mouths of friends and loved ones, occasionally through strangers, and very seldom through burning shrubbery. We just aren't usually listening - I know I'm usually not; my mind has a tendency to keep spinning madly about.

Believe what you will. I just know that I suddenly knew what to do. While I didn't hear an actual voice (I think the Divine knows I'm not quite ready for that level of interaction), there was a sense of deep calm and I knew that today, my job was set out before me. It was as if I had been told, "Don't just do something. Sit there."

Wise advice indeed. The speech evaluations on my coffee table can wait, the outlined chapter can wait to be turned into paragraphs, and the dust bunnies can have another day to evolve into a democratic society.

My life is not "Woe is me" and I'm going to play in the sunshine to remember that.