CHANGING MY MIND TO SAVE MY MIND - A MULTI-TASKER'S DILEMMA

Which quotation best represents you?

"You must master your time rather than becoming a slave to the constant flow of events and demands on your time. And you must organize your life to achieve balance, harmony, and inner peace." – Brian Tracy

OR

"If you can’t ride two horses at once, you shouldn’t be in the circus." – American Proverb

Let’s face it. I either “vegg out” and spend a lot of time playing computer bridge and Hoyle games, or I go full bore with whatever project is at hand, juggling everything that comes along and giving 150%. I have a hard time saying “no” if someone asks me to do something, and I don’t like letting people down. This is a recipe for stress and drama. I guess I must like living this way or I wouldn’t keep doing what I do. All I know is that when I am in worker mode I am a multi-tasking nightmare walking.

I had intended to continue writing about our journey to Virginia, sharing insights about the American Revolution, the Civil War, and life in an important time long ago. BUT regular life got in the way, so it will have to wait until another week. By regular life I mean what I do daily. In this case it means almost single handedly planning and implementing a scholarship banquet for one hundred and thirty five people on May 17.

The banquet will be honoring thirteen Seattle high school graduates who will each be receiving $l,000 awards from the Martin Luther King School Dream Foundation. Family, friends, school administrators, former teachers and community members will be on hand to celebrate the event. It’s a big deal to all the stake holders. It’s a big deal to me because twelve years ago I committed to putting on an annual banquet honoring young scholarship winners, and it’s grown from thirty-five to one hundred and thirty-five guests.

So that becomes my priority approaching midnight on a Sunday, and in the words of Robert Frost, I still have "miles to go before I sleep." Also, like Robert Frost, I have promises to keep. I had made a promise to myself to publish an article every Sunday, so here is an introduction to an article about giving and receiving. I'll leave you with that until tomorrow night or the next as I keep plugging along. . . . . .

. . . . . .It’s the night after the banquet -- a very successful one I might add. Now I am again looking at my blog and thinking about the last twenty-four hours. As the title indicates I “changed my mind to save my mind.” Now I’m going to change it again because the topic of “giving and receiving” is too important to just throw together, and I’m still not ready to tackle it or Appomattox. Instead, as I concentrate on what the last few weeks looked like, the word that comes to mind is “multi-tasking.” While I was looking up what other people say about juggling tasks I came across a funny picture with a toilet in the middle, a computer on one side of it and a phone and answering machine on the other. Click on the address here to see the picture and read the article. It made me smile. http://www.crystalinks.com/multitasking.html

My multi tasking revolves around my computer, my cell phone and my car. Here is part of a 24 hour period from the Friday before the banquet.

1. Write summary paragraphs for all thirteen mandatory application essays. Include them in a packet that also contains a list of over one-hundred former award winners, and a great poem called “Why Did You Come To School Today?” (Note: There was a lot of copying and pasting involved. I love being able to copy and paste, and whoever invented it needs a medal.)

2. Drive to Lowell Elementary School to pick up rainbow placemats that had been colored by some of the students there, followed by a stop at Garfield High School to pick up a box of books for the banquet.

3. Drive madly back to Office Max where I make 150 copies of the packet then grab a quick “no room Americana” at a nearby Starbucks.

4. Once home consult the computer to view last minute changes to the guest list. Make, save and print the changes.

5. Make a name tag list for all the guests, then print it off.

6. (In between work on making corrections to the new foundation web site which is going to be shown for the first time at the banquet.)

7. Knowing that there will be eighteen tables, each seating eight, figure out who will sit where which involves knowing the guests, diplomacy and another list.

8. Once that list is made, sort out name tags by table, Then catalogue them neatly into envelopes.

9 . . . and on and on and on. You get the idea. I think it’s called multi-tasking. And this was only a few hours in the twenty four I mentioned. I think there were only about five hours for sleep because I was too charged up to sleep longer.

The point is, I worked hard and got the job done. Is there a price? You bet. My house was a disaster, my husband either fixed his own food or ate frozen dinners, and I woke up on the day of the banquet with a dizzy spell. Is it worth it? To know the banquet was a success and brought joy to a lot of people felt great. Will I do it again? Probably. It’s either the way I was made or how I evolved. Or maybe it’s because I’m a “two” on the Enneagram. I know that to live with me must be trying and challenging when I am in my full on work mode. I wish I could be more like my husband – measured, self disciplined, organized. But I have a hunch, because of our different styles, he might say that he couldn’t have gotten the job done in the same period of time.

The world is full of multi-taskers. Teachers definitely fall in that category, especially on the elementary school level. If you have twenty five kids in your room and the bell rings, you will probably have twenty five different tasks in the first half-hour of school. But if multi-tasking is not your work style because it seems so frenetic and disorganized, remember that somehow we multi-taskers accomplish a lot, and take time to appreciate us. It’s the way we are.

By the way, it’s 1:10 a.m. As I redo my blog, and put the finishing touches on it, I am also planning something special for my daughter’s birthday today, determining how to drop off and pick up some things from the banquet site, trying to figure out the best time to return a rental van, and wondering if I will be called in for an afternoon of substitute teaching.

You will notice I started this article with a question and two quotations rather than just one as I usually do. Perhaps you will recognize my husband in the first quote. The second quote is all about me. :)