This weekend, I missed an event I had really been looking forward to. My friend Cliff had invited a bunch of us up to his place to watch a movie and hang out, and I had promised to make it.
In the meantime, half of the family has had the same creeping crud that's going around. The Pirate has a rattling cough, and the Baby Goddess has a perpetually runny nose and no energy. This means that I spend my time doing a very few things: working, taking care of someone who is not me, sleeping or editing. I've been utterly heads-down on my editing such that although I had announced my inability to complete Nanoedmo this year, it's the 13th and I've got something in the neighborhood of 27 hours under my belt. I've done some re-writing, some re-arranging, some cutting and a lot of reading out loud.
Saturday I spent the day running around, and got home late in the afternoon and started my editing. I didn't even remember my date at Cliff's house until this evening, and when I remembered it I broke down in tears. My harp needs a new low A string, I need to work out more and I owe about fifty thousand people phone calls or emails. And none of those things is probably going to happen before I finish this draft of my novel.
Will my friends forgive me? I'm sure they will. It's not like they've never done it. Can I forgive myself? I don't know. I've trained myself to think that I'm a superwoman and can do everything, but that's not true. What it's come down to is this: I'm angry at myself for focusing so completely on the priorities I set myself. It's stupid, I know, but there it is.
Sunday, March 13, 2005
The Cost of Productivity
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2 comments:
I know this is a two year old post I am commenting to, but it was one of the first Google results for "cost of productivity."
Thanks for your story, I have definitely been there and been just as hard on myself for it. Your friends and family will forgive you. Hopefully by now you have forgiven yourself as well :-)
Your comment - two years after the original post - came the morning after I had yet another productivity-related meltdown. Two years on, I'm still oversubscribing myself, still missing nonessential things and beating myself up for it.
The serendipity of it is that on the morning after I freaked out on everything, I get comments like this: little reminders from the universe via my friends that even if I'm not SuperWoman, it's all good.
Thanks!
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