Where Does The Time Go?

My brain is trying to readjust to being work-busy again. If there’s one thing I’ve realized about myself in the last year or so, it’s that my head is a metaphorical vacuum that can and will be filled by whatever is around to fill it, especially workwise. If I have one big story to do, then that one story will take up my entire day. If I have three, then those three will find ways to coexist and share space. It’s just how it is.

I didn’t expect this to be the case. When things started to slow down for me last year, I had this moment of thinking, well, at least I’ll be able to get all these other things done as well. I imagined being able to finish work by lunch aAnd then step away to take care of something, anything, else that required attention — housecleaning, my permanently overdue organization of my finances, literally anything that didn’t involve me sitting at my desk in my office until 5pm every day, as I’d become used to doing. That didn’t happen, though; instead, I found myself slowing down in terms of productivity — in part due to self-consciousness over not having enough work, asking myself if I wasn’t good at it anymore — so that one task would take the time available, no matter what.

What this has meant now that things are changing again (however long term that change may end up being) is that I’m having to relearn how to juggle projects, how to switch mental gears from one thing to the next without too much effort, and how not to drop balls along the way. (This year, that’s been more difficult than I’d like to admit, alas.) It’s an unexpected lesson to have to relearn, and one very unlike riding a bike as much as I might wish differently, but if 2022 is going to continue along the lines of these first few weeks, it’s one that’s going to become increasingly necessary.

This is a good thing, I’ll tell myself over and over.

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