Tag: overwhelm

Clusterfuck: Discernment in this Digital Age

I think we can all agree on this right?

The world has gone utterly mad. And worse, it has gone mad in a way that is unprecedented in most of human history. Too much change, too fast, too ubiquitous, too much erasure of past norms and expectations, too little by way of solid, sensible alternatives.

My singular take is that this era has thrown more at all of us than most of us can handle. I was just beginning to get a handle on the internet and all it offered when social media and its myriad applications and then AI comes along. Now I have a whole new cast of applications to explore and yet another new language to learn. All the while wondering if my intimate questions are being stored in some highly secretive database to be hauled out to my competitor’s advantage should I consider running for local council at any time up the road.

As a writer, I am well familiar with “prompts” designed to oil the internal writing machine and get words flowing. Now there are “AI influencers” willing to teach us how to write the most effective prompts to get the best answers for whatever thorny philosophical issue we are currently ruminating about and specifically targeted to whatever AI application we are using. Woof.

In the face of these myriad new options, we secretly struggle with the attendant anxiety that the very Bot we are pouring our hearts and intimate thoughts out to may one day circle back and enslave us in a way we have not yet even imagined. All we know (or fear) is: “Machines may one day take over the world!” (You mean they haven’t already?)

We used to have “trusted” sources to rely on to navigate our lives. Or at least calm us down. It almost seems naively comical now. The media. The church. Government (okay, I know that is a candidate for serious debate about trust). And God help us, our elders. People who have lived for a few decades and had enough life experience to actually guide the next generation with wisdom and clarity. Snort. The words “antiquated” and “Dodo bird” come to mind. They have wisdom and experience all right. The problem is their advice just isn’t particularly relevant in the face of the modern technological era.

I come from the generation that transitioned from no TV to “three channels to choose from” TV to color TV. Pop quiz. How many channels are there worldwide now? Don’t worry. I don’t remotely claim to know how many there are either. That appears to be a generic problem today. Too many choices. Too few “trusted sources.” Little to no integrity in our leaders or in our institutions.

So here is the task that lies before us individually. Discernment. The joy of youth is the promiscuous exploration of the many and various options life has to offer. People date extensively. They travel worldwide. They may move fluidly through several jobs among different career paths. Humans are fundamentally creatures of habit and structure. We are limited after all.

The myriad of choices available now are more overwhelming than freeing. Eventually one must choose a path and stick to it. You can choose the path of eclecticism, of course, flitting from pursuit to pursuit. But that usually leads to fragmentation in your spirit and in your life.

I remember when rising to the top of a career needed the single minded determination of a sperm heading for the egg. Success meant having to out swim and outlast all of its competitors to claim the prize of fertilization. Victory was well-defined. A baby was the trophy for all that effort. In the work world, it was the chase of promotion after promotion, pay raise after pay raise, elevation from the cubicle to a corner office. Retirement one day with the promise of a gold watch and a pension that would sustain you until the grave.

Work models in the modern era? Utterly upended. Today there are a hundred different paths to a hundred different prizes all with the promise of varying degrees of legitimacy and success. Remote work? Once a beleaguered office worker’s pipe dream is now constrained only by the strength and stability of your internet connection. Fame? Accessible through many platforms if you have the requisite discipline and messaging to sustain a consistent and engaging online presence. And pensions? Those are mostly cheap accommodations in major cities around the world.

In therapy, they say acknowledging there is a problem is the first step on the path to resolving it. Hear, hear. Acknowledging that the tsunami of technological change has come on way too hard and too fast for most of us to comfortably absorb and process it all is a strong start. And instead of social cohesion, fragmentation in the general population is entirely understandable. When everyone can be famous or heard or develop an online presence, how does one choose the path that is right for them individually? Who do you listen to?

I keep coming back to discernment. Instead of mindlessly, scrolling hour after hour, take time to let information drift its way through your psyche and see what fits for you. Use your imagination to conceive of what your life might become if you pursue what really matters to you. Learn to use the internet and the amazing tools it offers to get clarity instead of stuffing your intellectual attic with yet more “life hacks.”

We are living through an unprecedented historical revolution. Stability will emerge on the other side because that is what human beings seek and crave. The trick individually will be to come out of all this upheaval intact and with a sense of self you can live with and still recognize as you. Accept that and buckle up. Stay alert and keep your eyes open and wits about you. That’s what I’m going to do anyway. Take what I say with the proverbial grain of salt. I am a single voice among billions.

Overextended

A happy life, I’ve learned, is all about balance.

A happy life usually has equal parts of joy and stress and in manageable measures.

There will always be challenges in the tasks of daily life.

We take care of ourselves. We create and check items off our “to-do” list. We pay our bills. Send congratulatory birthday messages. Take the garbage out. Eat.

But then there are those other times. The times when stress is greater than joy. When the tasks that need to be done match the complexity of Santa’s gift list. (How DOES he do it?)

Lately, I find myself in Santa’s shoes – metaphorically.

I’m setting up house and the process seems to have gone on ad infinitum. That is an exaggeration but you may relate to the feeling.

When the budget report is due at work. The term paper is due tomorrow. The school bake sale is on the weekend and you haven’t even picked up baking supplies yet.

The end of the month means all the bills have to be paid on time or face penalties and interest charges if they aren’t. Is there enough in the account to cover everything?

It is cyclical. I think that is god’s trick to keep us all moving forward. I mean, if everything were taken care of for us and we had nothing to do or plan for, what could we possibly do with all of our free time?

Part of being busy for me is personality and character based. I love being busy. It is something of a creative exercise for me to plot and plan and devise what new projects I can take on.

Whether those projects are focussed on my hubby or in the kitchen, the garden, the house, or the world at large, I am always happier when I have tasks to accomplish.

And happier still, when I have the means to accomplish those tasks. That means the health and energy to tackle them. The money to acquire the necessary components for the task(s).

If I’m honest, overextended for me is a way of being. I say I don’t like it when stress is out of control and I am wildly out of balance between happy time and fretting. But who created this imbalance, I am compelled to ask?

Er, me? Okay. Yes. Guilty as charged. It may be that overextension has become a habit of mine. I raised two children as a single parent. Those were days of fairly nonstop overwhelm.

Speaking personally, no one advises you exactly how much time, attention and hard labor (well beyond the initial birth pushing to get them here) that babies and children require.

That is likely an unspoken agreement on the part of humanity to ensure the population keeps replenishing itself. Because if everyone knew at the outset exactly what the whole child-rearing/parenting gambit was going to entail, it might discourage people from having them.

In this current slice of overwhelm I am living through, I am quietly seeking solutions. Prioritize to start. What has to be done? (And what are the consequences if it isn’t?) What do I want to do? (And why? Personal satisfaction or to please someone I love?)

Or, frankly, the third block on my priority list is that it doesn’t matter. If I ever get around to doing this thing, it likely won’t matter but I’ve always wanted to try it and wouldn’t it be neat if I could? (Rock tumbling and polishing comes to mind. Don’t ask. A childhood hangover.)

So time to make a new priority list. Time to carve up those tasks according to my little chart of need/want/maybe. Time to engage the help of others (when and as possible). Time to give myself a break.

And while I’m at it, I’m going to give myself a hand and an “attagirl” for what months of attacking “to-do” lists has already helped me achieve. I don’t normally promote looking backwards as it usually accomplishes little to ruminate about the past.

But occasionally, when you need to take a breath and a breather to reorient yourself to what you need to do, it is good to remind yourself of what you have accomplished.

Likely at a time when you were in a place very much like the place of overwhelm you are trying to dig yourself out of today. Remind yourself of what’s been done to date and how far you’ve come.

Sip and savor that cappuccino. Read a little from a best-selling new novel between tasks. Sit in the sun and appreciate the garden you planted that wasn’t there before you came along.

It’s an important strategy boost to reenergize yourself for the tasks ahead.

I believe it is called balance.

Self-Regulation

If anyone detects a throughline in my posts lately, you are right. I am a little obsessed about the ups and downs of my emotions. No, I am not manic-depressive. I am, however, something of a stress case.

I am stressed by the complexities of the household move we are making. And, in good old hunker down and get ‘er done fashion, I’m trying to act as if it is not bothering me one bit. But it is bothering me. Quite a bit.

Yesterday a lady from whom I had purchased two armchairs on Facebook Marketplace leaned on me rather imperiously to come and collect them. I have 73 things on my plate at the minute. Picking up her chairs was somewhere around 65 on my priority list. Why couldn’t she ease off and understand the stress I am under?

Turns out she was under some stress, too. Imagine? They were packing up to leave the following day on an extended trip. She had just had two disks inserted into her spine. As I watched her walking upright around her living room, I was impressed and amazed but also embarrassed by my childish reaction to her insistence that I pick up what I bought.

I thumbed through my mental Rolodex (remember those?) and the common denominator in this type of uncomfortable situation was me. Something to do with growing up without boundaries sometimes makes it very difficult to impose them on myself.

I had grown up accustomed to having inappropriate responsibility heaped upon me without oversight or intervention by my parents. There were very few rules in our household when I was growing up. Beyond those where we worked to keep up appearances of normality and hide the addictions and violence between the parents going on behind closed doors.

In a worldly and sophisticated city like Paris or London, our family might have been perceived as Bohemian. Being a Bohemian had a certain artistic cachet in a big city. In a small conservative town, it was simply seen as neglect.

I ached when most of my friends were called home to supper or nervously checked their Timexes as it inched closer to the time they had been told to be home. Me and my two sisters rarely had to be home at a specific time for anything, let alone sit-down meals.

There was no set bedtime on any night – even school nights – throughout my childhood. We stayed up with and partied and socialized as long as the adults did. The line between freedom and neglect was very thin in the household I grew up in.

As I grew older, my lack of internalized boundaries often showed up in a wide and rapid range of my felt emotions. An old boyfriend often used to say: “Margot, you’re “too.” What I thought was charming and coquettish behavior, others likely perceived as bad-mannered and precocious. I longed to be calm and cool like many of my other girlfriends. I had no idea how to do that.

With time, it got better and easier to settle myself down in stressful situations and hold my tongue and not say something I would invariably come to regret. I eventually taught myself strong and consistent boundaries. Most of the time, the dyke holds.

But I was already tired and overwhelmed and rundown by the time this lady started demanding something of me that mostly just felt like “one more thing.” I was still smarting over the paint-ruined carpet of the day before and had just had an inane conversation with the security system installation representative. I was beat. I am beat.

What is different now from days gone by is recognizing me in all of my “bitchy, over-the-top, I’ve had enough and need to lie down” glory. What followed my little phone outburst of sarcasm and displeasure with the lady I had been rude to were copious declarations of mea culpa. That’s progress, I guess.

Tomorrow – aside from the things I must do – will be about attacking that absurd and overburdened “to-do” list and cutting it down to a manageable size. It is okay to take time and let weeks, even months pass before we settle into our new digs. As is often said in healing circles, I’m “setting boundaries.”

I’ll be setting boundaries both with myself and with the unrealistic expectations I created for myself. Easing up on myself and letting go of some of the irritants somebody else can take care of.

Now there you go. I feel better already.