What Keeps Me Up At Night

I rarely get enough sleep.  It’s usually my own fault:  go to bed early or watch the new “Project Runway”?  Tim Gunn wins every time.

But I often wake in the middle of the night, thoughts racing.  They’re never the biggies – saving for retirement or my dad’s health.  They’re always little.  As in microscopic.  We’re out of raisins.  I should brush the dog.  That library book is due in three days.

Clearly I’m sweating the small stuff.  But try as I might, I can’t shake those thoughts at 4:00 a.m., which becomes 4:30 a.m., which becomes 5:00 a.m.  I keep a legal pad at my bedside, so that I can (theoretically) unload my brain and get back to sleep.  It sometimes works.  But in the morning I find cryptic notes like “cAr Tusday.”  Your guess is as good as mine.

I should be happy my subconscious jolts me awake to wrestle with minutia.  It’s much better than existential dread.  But am I avoiding the heavy stuff?  Can I only bear to think about the raisins?

What keeps you up at night?

No News is Good News

My husband and I uphold the quaint tradition of reading the morning newspaper.  I like starting the day on top of the news, and it’s a great excuse to keep drinking coffee.  But some days, reading the paper is more than I can take.  By page five, I could be sucker punched by a Middle East bombing, famine in Africa, and two drive by shootings just miles from my home.

Over the years, my husband has developed the terrific ability to censor news that will be too much for me.  I’ll come downstairs and he’ll say, “The front section of the paper is already in the recycling bin.  Don’t look for it.”  But when I get to the paper first, I have to take my chances.

We all get that feeling that the world has gone nuts.  “Why did I bring my children into this dangerous world?”  “That’s it.  I’m moving to Canada.”   How do we stay informed but still protect our tender hearts?

Two words:  news blackout.  Go ahead, take a break.  Unless it's your job to be a news junkie (like, say, Anderson Cooper) step back for awhile.  We’re all afraid of appearing clueless, but I doubt you’ll get slammed for not knowing this week’s Tea Party hijinx.

While you’ve got your head in the sand (in a good way), decide what kind of news cuts you to the quick.  Then donate to an organization that promotes world peace, international economic development, violence prevention, whatever.  Do it regularly. 

You could, for example, sponsor my good friend Lila as she bravely runs a 5K on October 23^rd.  She’s raising money to help inner city teens fulfill their college dreams (http://www.active.com/donate/UmojaR4R/LilaLeff).  I did.  And damn, I feel good.

My Paper Piles of Shame

To my friends and neighbors, I appear to be an Organized Person.  My kitchen is usually under control, and a peek inside my cabinets will reveal dear little labels specifying what goes where.  They’re in my freezer, too.  My closet is small, but I do feel a teensy bit smug that my clothes are organized by type and color, while lounging on matching Huggable Hangers.

Just don’t go into my home office.  Now, before you call the film crew for “Horders,” know that it doesn’t look all that bad.  You might think I’d been extra busy the past few weeks, so I’ve shoved some papers into a few piles.  The problem with these piles isn’t their volume, but their age.  They’ve been there forever. 

Many reams of paper have flowed in and out of my office following the proper procedure.  Bills are eventually filed.  Recipes are eventually tossed.  But there’s something about these particular sheets that freeze me in my tracks.  I just don’t know what to do with them.

A brief excursion into one pile produces the following:

• The front section of a newspaper dated March 22, 2010 that reads, “HOUSE PASSES HEALTH REFORM.”   I miss Obama’s smile.

• A notice from my bank dated February 22, 2008 encouraging me to sign up for overdraft protection.  Did I ever do that?  No idea.

• From July 20, 2010, a seven-page transcript of my online chat with an Apple tech support supervisor (Mike, BTW), trying to help me sync the calendar on my iPhone with my MacBook.  Synchronicity eludes me still.

• A letter from my dear friend Lisa dated November 1, 1988, in which she gave my new boyfriend her seal of approval.  Eventually, he lost it.

Before you freak out that my piles date back to the Reagan administration, let me stress that this relic came from cleaning out some old boxes in my parents’ garage.  But what to do with it?  Keep it for myself?  Send it to Lisa?  Toss it?  It’s not one of the better examples of our correspondence (she goes on to describe a bout of food poisoning), but it’s from my history, people.

The other papers alternate between mementos and to-dos, but none of them have a final resting place.  I can’t muster the energy to curate a personal museum, and more pressing to-dos have shoved aside the old ones.  So they continue to languish in piles, mocking me, until one day, their disintegration will decide the matter.

Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire

I notice a lot of untruths spilling from my mouth.  “When things calm down.”  “When I come up for air.”  “When the dust settles.”

But really, things never calm down, I never come up for air, the dust never settles.  I will always be busy, and I know it.  It makes me feel better to say these things to myself and others, but I know in my heart of hearts this magical period of tranquility will never come.  Cross one thing off my list and three more items are added on.  Clear my inbox, and it’s full again before I know it.

Perhaps the best way to find peace is to make peace – make peace with the buzz of information and activity in our lives.  When older folks talk about aging, they often say, “It’s better than the alternative!”  Maybe living with information overload is better than the alternative (e.g., living a desperately lonely life off the grid with twenty-seven cats).  Those of us blessed with family, friends, homes and hobbies will always have data to sort and act on. 

I still need to sift through all the information that smacks me upside the head every day.  But I’m also going to feel gratitude for some of it.  I’m lucky to get a soccer game schedule, because my son is strong and healthy.  I’m lucky to keep track of that parent-teacher conference, because my daughter attends a great public school.  I’m lucky to get a mortgage bill, because we own a home.  I’m lucky to drag myself out on a Wednesday evening, because my book club wants me there. 

I’m lucky.

The Bluebird of (Un)happiness

I hate that little blue Twitter bird.  Cannot stand him.  Every time I see his jaunty profile, I hyperventilate a bit.  My pulse quickens, my eyelid twitches, my stomach clenches.

Twitter represents the most stressful aspect of my online life.  It’s so frenetic, so constant, so pervasive.  I’m a marketing gal, so it’s my professional duty to tweet my heiney off.  But you know what?  I don’t wanna.

Some businesses really, truly should be tweeting up a storm, but I’ve weighed the costs (my stress) vs. benefits (maybe a new client here and there), and I’ve decided to opt out.

So on Sunday, September 25, 2011 at 1:57 p.m., I deactivated my Twitter account.  The earth didn’t swallow me whole.  The marketing gods didn’t hurl a lightning bolt my way.  Nothing happened.  

From now on, when someone asks me if I’m on Twitter, I’ll simply say “Nope,” and smile serenely.  Then I'll refer them to my Facebook page.

Too Much Information

I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of feeling like an idiot because I can’t manage the myriad details of life, both online and off.  So in an uncharacteristic show of impulsivity, I started this blog today to talk about how overwhelmed I feel by everyday data (caution: venting ahead), and to chat about how we can all gain some inner peace in this brave new world.

Now, I know it seems hypocritical to take to the blogosphere with this issue – after all, the internet is a major source of my information overload.  But this isn’t about becoming a Luddite.  It’s about choosing technology and filtering information in a way that gives us the stuff we need, while ignoring the noise.

So here is my pledge:  I solemnly swear to develop some sort of filter to cull the data that doesn’t really matter and somehow find peace in the process.  I’m not sure how this is going to work, but I think it’s critical to my pursuit of happiness.  Who’s in?