Balancing Life: Is it "Too Many Interests" or "Not Enough Time?"

My desk is actually kind of neat and tidy at the moment, following several days of feverish paper shuffling and filing and organizing!

That Feeling of Overwhelm...

Having dealt with one aspect of the "feeling overwhelmed by everything" sensation, I now get to face the next one: where to begin.

I have a lot of different interests. And every time I consider my many interests, it seems like they "branch" by themselves because there are sub-interests within those interests. Then I sit down and draw up schedules and to-do lists, and a couple of days later I look organized, but I'm still overwhelmed by this enormous network of stuff, so I end up distracting myself with something irrelevant.

It's tempting to say that I have too many interests, but I am genuinely interested in all the things I'm interested in (phew!) and it leaves me bumping my head against the obvious question of whether I really have too many interests, or I just don't have enough time!

Not Alone!

It occurs to me, that this is actually an issue many people deal with, and I definitely don't feel like I'm alone in this.

Lately, I've been reading articles and blog posts about getting organized and the value of having a system by which you work, and I've been watching a few decluttering your life YouTube clips just on the speculation that maybe I needed to deal with my hoarding tendencies. I definitely got some ideas, as well as some reassurance that I am not part of the group that has the hoarding disease! I just have ADHD-ish tendencies.

I'm not exactly panicking here, I am more coming face-to-face with a sort of background dread that we are going to be moving from this house in 4-5 years... to a place that is considerably smaller. So it would be really nice to gradually get organized in time for that rather than suddenly having to try to accomplish an enormous amount of stuff in a very short time. Been there, done that (when I left Texas in 2006) and really didn't enjoy it!

Time to Cut the Fat!

Of all the information I have taken on board over the last few weeks the most useful was one organization specialist who said "pick THREE things and focus on them; gradually get rid of everything else."

Her point was that most people don't really have the capacity to do more than three things reasonably well — concurrently — and by having more than that on your plate you're really doing yourself more of a disservice than "diversifying."

I knew that, but had done my best to negatively hallucinate it...

As I look around my space and evaluate what's going on, I'm inclined to agree with the "three things" approach. And I can also say with some degree of certainty that I actually only have three primary things that I'm actively pursuing, while all my remaining ostensible "business activities" are basically the result of my clinging to things that have long since passed their prime.

So the time has come to cut the fat from the time and effort budget!

If I actually see this through as I am now visualizing it, it would leave me with my writing/editing as one source of work and income; I would keep my long time online business of selling old postage stamps to collectors; lastly, I would like continue to pursue my artwork and develop it further.

"Item 3.5" — for lack of a better term — would consist of hanging on to one of my eBay accounts, purely for the purpose of gradually selling off all the other stuff while not buying anything new to replace them. That part will be new!

The other bit of reasonably good information — which was more reassurance than anything — is the importance of setting realistic goals. I don't have to do all this today, or tomorrow, or this month. The objective is to have at least 90% of the extraneous stuff gone from our lives in five years from now. And that is a realistic goal.

But I still need to figure out where to start!

Thanks for stopping by, and have a great remainder of your week!

Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation! I do my best to answer comments, even if it sometimes takes a few days!

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Created at 2023-07-17 22:22 PDT
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