The To Do List

I'm writing to you from week 2 of the school year. The excitement and euphoria of week one has worn off and I am on my 4th cup of coffee, rushing through a mammoth to-do list and watching the clock until I have to drop what I am doing and run down the road to collect the children. Last week, those 6 hours a day when they were safely at school seemed to stretch into be an almost obscene amount of time to work in. I blasted through the work, even scheduling in naps, giddy with the sheer luxury of working without three children constantly needing feeding/entertaining/a fight breaking up/ feeding again. This week, I am dragging myself through the day and the list - tired already from the routine of getting kids out the door in the morning and feeling the squeeze of 'only' having 6 hours to do all the things. 

No matter how I feel about it though, that to do list still needs to get done. My mantra on these days where it seems like I am wading through it all is simply to "Turn up and do the work". There is no productivity app, no life hack, no cute acronym for achievement, just showing up, rolling up my sleeves, doing what needs to be done and forgiving myself if my list was bigger than I could manage that day.

I am learning that this last point is simply a reality of this 'life in the making' that we lead...the list will always be too big. We will always cross one thing off, only for 3 more to be added to the bottom.  As someone who loves a blank page to start from, to say I find the unending nature of our life 'hard' is an understatement.  But I am learning to develop the vision that allows me to see the things we have done, not just the things that lie unfinished.