Productivity

The first named storm of the season has reached us and passed us: Alberto. The winds snapped one of my brand new papaya trees, but it’s ok because I planted seven other ones and we don’t even eat papayas. We give it away to our friends that do like papayas, because they are like four dollars a pop! More if they’re organic, and even more if they are also local.

Hurricane season hasn’t even started yet. In fact, our rainy season started early this year. It rained the entire Memorial Day weekend and all the events in and around the city were canceled and we accomplished next to nothing. And by that I mean, the husband got to go see the new Star Wars movie. I don’t know which one it is cause I don’t want to spend what ever amount of brain power would take to know that. But that’s it. I barely wrote, I didn’t clean, I opened my email twice, I didn’t catch up on my reading and I only made dino nuggets for the kid. The husband and I had salads and left overs for most of the weekend that he made. I haven’t seen most of my friends in about a week and I haven’t kept up with my challenge. Growing season is over, so even my work around the yards is limited, and not really necessary. I have kept up with my things to do for the event, but only because I don’t want to be the person that drops the ball.

I’m not feeling very productive. My little library needs to be refilled, my porch needs to be cleaned, the kid needs me to make her new shorts (the store bought shorts are to short… in the words of Tina Fey “there’s just not enough crotch!”), I need to make a new bridge in the back yard, clear the jungle, send out two different novellas to edit, call a bunch of people, and return some emails. I need to schedule the kid for some summer events, buy our tickets for Montana, and schedule the animal sitter for our trip to Montana.

The more time I spent not getting things accomplished, the less motivated I felt. The more grey the skies got the less I wanted to get up and do anything. And the guilt (of not doing anything) came in right about the same time, three seconds after I decided to stay sitting down playing with whatever device I had on my hands. I won one of the tournaments playing Fishdom.

My energy levels are depleted. I remember a time when I could run from my full time job to grad school, with less than three hours of sleep, with nothing but a Lean Cuisine for dinner, and still have enough energy to play racketball. I miss racketball. I started playing when I was in the service and continued for a few years until I moved back to New York. But now a days I live an eventless, boring, charming little existence where my biggest worries are picking up dry cleaners, the length of the lines at Costco, and running late for soccer.

Now, my lack of motivation is making me question why I want to get this done. I’m getting anxious about the event. That anxiety is clouding my mind with “what ifs” and making me doubt myself. What if nobody shows up? what if the sponsors pull out? What if people don’t like it? what if there’s only one event and that’s it? What if the other people just stop trying? what if I have somebody mad at me for something that I did, but have no idea, and now I don’t know how to fix it? (The thinking side of my brain knows that this is an irrational fear…. but the other part of my brain has been debilitated by it.) What if I can’t figure out how to make a little map? (Also irrational.) What if everybody else is working harder than me? What if people think I’m a slacker? Do I just want to get this done and move on with my life? Not really…. There is one more project I want to see it throu. Am I scared that it will be a failure? Does it really take this little to break me down?

A few years ago, after the kid had been born, I was talking to the husband and I said, “When you’re at work, I don’t want you to think that I’m sitting around here doing nothing.”

He took one look at me and said, “Oh. I KNOW you’re not sitting around doing nothing.”