Dreaming, Doing, and Deadlines

First...woohoo! It's been just about 3 weeks since my last post...I'm getting better. I think. Actually, I have several things to write about, so if the clock gods will work with me, I may get back to a productive schedule.

Which brings me to today's topic.

I am deadline oriented. I've known for years (decades, really) that I work better under the pressure of a clock. There are times this is good, because I don't crumble under pressure--I step up and do what needs to be done, even if it is someone else's emergency, and I do it reasonably well.

On the other hand, I don't do as well taking the long-term view of things. It may be a side-effect of my type A personality, where I'm so focused on the urgency of whatever I'm doing at the moment, that I don't have time to attend to longer-term patterns.

I have plenty of goals, short and long term (let's call them dreams, shall we? Just so my title makes sense), but I'm better at taking aim at shorter-term goals and working on them. Hard for me to map out my entire career, for example, easier to look at today's writing goal.

So in the "doing," I have a bit more trouble. Procrastination, some people call it. Easily distracted, I've been told (an ex-boyfriend of mine used to actually laugh at me--kindly, he really thought it was funny--about my "hobby of the week," because I throw myself into things, and if it's the wrong thing for me, *poof* something replaces it a week later, and I'm stuck with, well, stuff. Beads, yarn, books on various topics, etc. But I digress.). I've been working on the same big areas of my life for, oh, 20 years or so, without much progress.

Then I got a deadline. Okay, not really a deadline--let's call it more of a cosmic ultimatum. I have to dial my type A personality down to a type B and make some drastic changes. It's a health issue, but my immmediate realization was that it isn't a medical issue, it's a lifestyle issue. I move too fast, too hard, too crazily, and my body is protesting. Vigorously.

To bring myself back to healthy, I have to slow down. Figure out what's important and do only that. Stop grousing about how I don't have enough time to do everything, and recognize that, duh, no, I don't. No one does.

A few months ago, I was looking at a garden--herbs, flowers. prayer flags, a fountain--stunned by the beauty and peace of it, and wondering why I shy away from tranquility. Now I have to learn to make friends with it, revel in the depths of it. Calm down those firing nerves and bring my focus back to center.

My to do list has gotten a lot shorter recently. Writing. Yoga. Cooking healthy food. Going to the gym. Writing more. Journalling, clearing up the past. Volunteering...only not so much. Meditating...only not so little.

Nothing like a kick in the ass from the Universe to get your priorities in order. I've dreamed, I've done...now I'm doing more with less. Never mind the deadlines.