After “sharing” home office space with my husband for three years (translation: I had a desk in there but I was rarely at it because our working styles were not compatible), he moved to his new office in our unused formal living room last week. I’ve spent much of the past few days cleaning and organizing my space and collecting my things from where they were scattered throughout the house. I’ve still got some organizing to do, but at least I know everything is here (somewhere) and I again have a door I can close when I need to.

I took the day yesterday to relieve my horse of his winter coat. (Click here to see what that entails.) Yes, even though it’s still near 90 degrees and humid, Tank was sporting his usual premature wooliness. I’m not quite finished—I have three legs left and some tidying—but he’s much more comfortable. Since he’s now shorn, that means it’s likely a cold front will come through and drop the temps. (Bring it on! I have a horse blanket.)

I expect to have a more “normal” schedule in the next week or so and will get back to more regular posting soon.

So what’s new with you?

Much of the poetry that has endured the longest is about the relentless movement of time, and in ways all art is about just that. Here’s a landscape in which time is at work, by Geraldine Connolly, who lives in Montana. [Introduction by Ted Kooser.]

Flathead Lake, October

The eagle floats and glides,

circling the burnished aspen,

then takes the high pines

with a flash of underwing.

As surely as the eagle sails

toward the bay’s open curve,

as surely as he swoops and seizes

the struggling fish, pulling

it from an osprey’s beak;

so too, autumn descends,

to steal the glistening

summer from our open hands.

That’s what I feel like I’m doing. Anyone else? Is it just me, or does life seem unaccountably, almost unbearably busy lately? I feel frantic! I have no down time between activities. I’m distracted—more so than normal. I shudder to think what the holidays will be like when I feel like this in September.

Since reading World Enough and Time, I’ve become more aware of time and my use of it, even going so far as to keep a time log a couple of weeks ago. Maybe it’s because I’m more aware that it seems like life has sped up?

From keeping the time log, I learned that I multi-task A LOT, and I do a lot of small tasks that add up to big chunks of time. I had to use a pen with an extra fine tip in order to fit all I did into the half hour boxes of the time log! Even if I was working out on the elliptical machine, I was also reading a magazine. If we had the TV on, I was cooking or cleaning the kitchen, balancing the checkbook or folding laundry. The only time I had large stretches of time doing one thing was when I went to the barn, and that’s because I didn’t record each individual thing I did while I was there.

No wonder I’m so tired by the end of the day. I really do cram a lot of little tasks into my days, often doing them one right after another. Since I can’t really point to any major accomplishment, except maybe keeping our lives running, I never get a feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment from what I do. So many things I do “disappear”—they must be done again, and again (and again). They’re not even noticed by anyone unless I stop doing them.

Is this a problem? Maybe. If I’m running around filling my days with the little details, I never have to face my fears—the fear that I won’t have anything to say when I sit in front of a blank page, or the fear that if I stopped “doing,” my worth as a human being would plummet. I want to be a contributor in life, not just a taker, but the way in which I’m going about it now is not sustainable.

I don’t want to live like this anymore. I’m stepping back and calling a halt, starting with a day off tomorrow. I’m going to look at my current schedule and activities and ask:

*Does this need doing?

*Do I need to do it?

*Can it be done less frequently?

*Can someone help me with this so it will go quicker?

It’s a start. Maybe then I’ll be able to get my head above water.

Do you have any tips on controlling your schedule and commitments you can share?

“Am I going to change the world, or am I going to change me? Or maybe change the world a little bit, just by changing me?”