Are you obsessing?
For the past week I had one goal: to paint my kitchen. This is something I set out to do more than a year ago and got majorly sidetracked to say the least. This week it just grabbed me... I can do this! The time is now! I had been dreaming about this kitchen for so long, yet (of course) the reality of *doing* the painting was not something I was looking forward to.
Here's how my last week looked... not including various take-out containers.
The issue is something I said above, however: "I had one goal this week." Is that true? Can we ever have one goal in our busy lives? I became slightly obsessed, waking up before my alarm each day, throwing on my painting clothes (sans shower each day) and heading to the coffee shop, painting by 8am. I would stop around 5 or 6pm each day and essentially collapse into bed with a book to repeat the whole process the next day.
Needless to say, I became a little loopy (it's mild enough to open the windows here, so I can only partially blame the paint fumes). Four days in I called a girlfriend for lunch... I told her I needed motivation to shower and some exposure to the outside world other than Facebook. I could feel myself slipping into old patterns... justifying my obsessiveness because it was results-oriented. Yet it was throwing me off balance. I skipped running and snowboarding. I was barely cooking for myself, resorting to restaurant fare. I had no social events on my calendar. I had elevated the importance of this project in my mind to the point where nothing else mattered, and I started to feel lonely and disconnected.
When I came out of the haze (just yesterday afternoon), I realized I was behind on bills, orders, emails, and other responsibilities... all this in a year where I'm trying to take the reigns more so I feel less in "respond" mode. I had lost all sense of the structure I had just started building for myself.
It's disappointing that this happened, yet two good things came out of it: a bright shiny kitchen! and the chance for me to see how far I've come in the last year. Falling back briefly into a little slump, albeit a slightly productive one, allowed me a glimpse back to how I used to feel anxious, out of control and out of balance. I'm learning that I do like some structure. I do like tackling some tasks a little bit each day. And I also need those full days off to really motivate and recharge myself for the work days ahead... little bits of coffee and chocolate only get me over the next hour or two of hurdles; they keep me in the single-minded, obsessive space where I'm not thinking about the big picture.
Luckily this whole cycle was less than a week, so I can recoup my ground pretty quickly to get back on track. When I reveal the new kitchen to you (which I guess I can do in phases because there's one more bit of construction to happen later this month), I'll also explain how painting the kitchen is all part of the big picture as well; it wasn't just another task to check off the To Do list.
Do you have any tips for breaking the obsessiveness of projects? Sometimes maybe it is necessary, yet I'd love to hear your tips. How do you switch gears and set aside time to tackle those more in-depth projects while still juggling emails, studio time, or more everyday tasks (like showering)?