Hello to all, Hello to myself,

I am stuck in the cyclical brain-drain of my occupational task lists.  All I am doing is running an endless loop of the checklists in my mind.  Cross something off, add two items, rearrange the schedule of next weeks deadlines, change the priority value of some items… It is funny to me that we refer to the most ineffective exercises of our day as “busy work”.  It seems like if we called it “wasting your time and preventing yourself from accomplishing something of value – work”… we would not feel so comfortable occupying that space.

  • “Hey Todd, what did you do today?”
  • “Oh it was just one of those days, you know… I just got caught up in a bunch of wasting my time and preventing myself from accomplishing something of value – work.”

That does not sound so well…

But that makes me think about another question.  Which is… do we do the things of our day to impress others or at least sound acceptable to them?  What is my real problem… Is it my participation in mindless activities?  Or, is it my insecurity of how others will perceive me doing less than whatever my mind thinks they would approve of… or that they would hold in high regard…

I think that answer is “Yes.”  Both issues are something that I need to be mindful of in my life.

I want to understand why I turn so easily to mindlessly hustling on the wheel of inconsequential stuff(s).  I know it is a wheel, it looks like a wheel when I am approaching it, it has a big sign on the front that says ‘this is the wheel… there is no beginning, there is no end, if you don’t want to be here and still go nowhere, then jump on and un-enjoy the non-ride.’  Yet, I enter that space over-and-over again.

I have always had a sense of being – not enough.  I consistently feel a pressure to live up to and beyond the expectations of others.  I feel it so deeply sometimes that I weep for what I see as a lacking in me.  A gap between who I think I am and who I think I am supposed to be….  why do I feel a need to meet an invisible expectation that was never stated, never written, never implied, but is often present in my mind…

Thank you for being, Michael.