Feeling a bit Frazzled

My desk is starting to look a bit scary - I have piles of paper starting to accumulate, books that need to be read or shelved, and a variety of others odds and ends. My desk cycles through phases, kind of like the moon. I'll let stuff pile up for a few weeks and then do a bit of a cleaning/filing frenzy and get it under control again.

Which of reminds me of my email inbox which is also looking a bit plump at the moment. I currently have 32 emails in my inbox, a number of which need some sort of action on my part. I generally try to aim for Inbox Zero - keeping my email inbox empty, or close to empty... but... that's not the case right now. And, it's getting close to the magic number of 50... which is the number of emails Gmail can display on one screen. After that, older emails will be a whole screen click away... not a good scene. Out of sight, out of mind and all that.

On top of that... my nice little schedule of pre-posted blogs has run out. Not sure how that happened but I am now behind the 8-ball with no blogs in the pipeline! And not just this blog, but my other two blogs as well...

All of this contributes to a sense of frazzle... I know that a lot of this is self-imposed frazzle. I'm the one who makes the deadlines for the blogs... I'm the one who ascribes to Inbox Zero and the idea that I should reply to emails within 48 hours... I'm the one who likes a tidy desk where I can find things.

At the same time, however, all of the little unfinished projects, tasks niggle away at me. They all take up energy in my space. And they all seem weirdly insurmountable or fraught with uncertainty. Even the little things... like sending in the form for a toilet rebate to the city. It's been sitting on my desk since February... the plan is to send the form to the city. That's it. All it needs is to be put in an envelope, addressed, stamped and dropped in a community mailbox which is 1.75 minutes away. Easy? Right? Nope... you see... the application says that you need to have a receipt from the dump... landfill... transfer station... stating that the old toilet was disposed of and not resold on Kijiji or something. But... we had a plumber install the toilet and he took the old toilet away to dispose of it. Sooo... can I send in our rebate application without the piece of paper from the dump? The plumber receipt says the toilet was "disposed of"... So is that good enough? Or do I need to follow up with the plumbing (again)... and try to get something more official? Decisions, decisions... and so the rebate application sits on my desk and niggles at me. By the way... I have installed toilets before but this was a basement toilet on a tile floor and... I'm glad we went with a plumber... He was muttering to himself the whole time because the flange bolts were bent and the flange was goofy because the tiles were so thick and.... I'm glad I didn't have to deal with that headache!

And that's just one thing on my desk... Imagine the stuff that goes on in my head with all the other incomplete tasks!! Everything seems mountain-ish... even if it's only molehill-ish... but I keep reminding myself that the title of this blog is all about Small Steps... and so I sit down and stare at an empty screen and just start typing... because every blog start with one word... and every mountain gets conquered with one step.

I've been working on building a shed in the back corner of the yard... Build Shed has been on my horizon for a while but... "Build Shed" has really been a bit too mountain-ish for me. But a week ago, I went back there and just started by setting the foundation blocks for the shed posts... and then figuring out where the retaining wall blocks would go... then buying the blocks and setting them... putting the posts in the foundation blocks.. squaring them up and... on it goes... The shed wasn't built in a day but yesterday the roof panels went on and... darn it if there ain't a shed in the back corner of the yard. And all I did was a few small steps every day... because with each small step, the next step would naturally materialize and that didn't seem like such a big deal and... I'd end up out there for three hours and get a tonne of stuff done.

And I know we're in a pandemic and moods come and go... some days are better than others... some weeks are a complete wash! But... I just need to keep reminding myself to start with one small step...