Monday Update
I should be in bed, but wanted to spend a couple minutes trying to honor my commitment (to myself) to blog at least ten minutes a day. I’ve missed a few days and I can only plead temporary schedule insanity. This last week needs to be marked as a personal testimony to the need for a better way of organizing my life. A lot of things caught up and needed to be finished before Saturday.
I was able to take care of most of them, and now am trying to enjoy a week’s vacation.
What pray tell, you ask, did I find myself needing to push myself to do?
Iowa Annual Conference was this last weekend, Wednesday through Sunday. For that, there is reading through the pre-conference material (not done, but there is plenty of time to catch up while the debates are going on, doable, but always much better to have read first), the construction of a new canvas labyrinth for use at the conference and then eventually to reside in the conference center (that was actually done 5 days early, but it did put a limit of time to get other things done.
Stuff needed pre-vacation: well, there was two Sundays of liturgy (I was preaching on AC Sunday at 2 of the 3 services because for some reason I hate to take 2 Sundays off in a row), the revision of a fund raising letter for one of the churches to send to the membership (fortunately I had already typed in the initial draft so just needed to go through and revise, but finished that on Saturday night, oh, and I needed to see what bills needed to be paid (Saturday night again).
Saturday Class. This was the biggest set of staying on top of tasks failures. I needed a 2-3 page single-spaced paper reviewing the whole year and how I saw changes in my understandings of spiritual direction, God, self, and relationship of self to God. Just a little, throw together paper right? (Written Saturday morning at 1:00). Then there were 4 two page papers on 4 books read on various topics related to spirituality and spiritual direction … all really due in May. Well, when I started the week, I had two books read. So over the course of the week I needed to completely read two books, then go through and find key points from all 4 books to reflect upon in the papers and then to write the papers. Somehow, I was able to finish them, but I printed them out at 2:00 in the morning on Saturday.
I’m not proud of my procrastination. I am someone familiar with it since I have tended to always do it this way, but there is a price to pay in missing other important tasks and duties all in the name of needing to catch up at the last minute. One source I read has linked procrastination and depression. I don’t doubt it in the least. So no part of my treatment plan for depression is to work smarter on taking care of things in a more timely manner so everything gets done when it needs to be done.
You will hold me to that, right?
Well, getting through conference and that last class for the year takes care of 80% of tasks that have been waiting to be done. Now there is space to become smarter in how I decide what to do and when.
There is one year left on the Institute for Spiritual Guidance class and there are 4 more to page book reports to have done over the Summer, due in September. As a sign of my commitment, I have brought the first of those books with me and will try to find some time to begin to read it.
PS. I do have a few things I have been accumulating to blog about, so with time this week I hope to write more things.
