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Author: Jessica Ruprecht

The only trick you need to beat overwhelm

How to beat overwhelmWith the holidays nearly upon us, it seems like a good time to take a step back and think a little bit about overwhelm. Because overwhelm is the secret schedule-killer just waiting to derail your holiday plans.

It’s easy to let the hustle and bustle of the holidays and all they entail (gift shopping, cooking, baking, party prep, traveling, mandatory socializing…) to out-compete our every-day to-do lists and leave us feeling that we’re running about haphazardly — like frantic chickens in a panic.

I know I’ve definitely been feeling the pressure for the past week or so.

(Where did December go?)

But, it doesn’t have to be so overwhelming.

Yes, I know you’re looking at your to-do list right now and it’s probably a mile long and so you’re asking the obvious question: How is this not impossibly overwhelming?

And of course, you’re right — it is overwhelming. But it’s overwhelming for a reason, and the reason is that you’ve allowed to-do list madness to take over and now your list is running you, rather than the other way around.

Here’s the trick you need to beat overwhelm.

It’s easy. There’s just a few simple steps.

  1. Take a deep breath and try to stop panicking. The panic doesn’t do you any good. It clouds your head, scatters your thoughts, and makes you less efficient at getting sh*t done. The panic isn’t helping so it’s time to step up and take control.
  2. Throw out the to-do list. The list isn’t helping either. It’s making you feel more overwhelmed, not less. So rip it out, tear it up, chuck it in the bin, burn it — whatever suits you, really. Just make sure it’s gone.
  3. Realize you already know what needs to be done. This is why you need to throw the list out. You already know what you need to do. But the list has grown out of control and now it contains all sorts of things that you don’t need to do, but which would be nice if you got to. Put aside those superfluous tasks.
  4. Figure out the most important thing has to get done. What is it? Probably the answer is screaming at you. I have nothing to eat! I’ll have no clothes if I don’t pack! My mother will never forgive me if I don’t bring the Yule Log! What are your mission-critical action items? Stop thinking about all the things you need to do — the real question is what can’t you do without?
  5. Now that you’ve figured out the most important thing — go do it! (Why are you still reading this blog post?)
  6. Repeat. You’ve finished your most important task! Congratulations. What’s the next most important thing you could be doing? Do that.

The beauty of this simple method is that it totally eliminates overwhelm. It takes your list of10,000 things you “need” to get done and reduces it to one — the one most important thing you can do right now.

And then the process snowballs. Instead of falling into overwhelm and to-do paralysis (that thing that happens when your list is so long that you don’t know where to start), instead you figure out what needs to be done right now and then you do it. Finishing one task builds momentum and suddenly you’re jazzed about your progress — you’re on a roll.

Game over. You just beat overwhelm.

And you packed your socks, too! Double win! And that’s not even the best part.

The best part is that if you really go for it with this strategy I guarantee you’ll achieve way more of the things on your to-do list than you’d have thought possible back when you were still staring at all 6 miles of it and wondering how on Earth you were going to manage.

It’s basically magic.

 

I’d love to hear from you! How are you keeping things sane with the holidays looming? Let me know in the comments.

When I look back, I see

When I look back the images that I see are of me, a little girl cast adrift in a sea that is vaster than her own imagination. I see myself in math class, attempting to hold within the circle of my skull the number of drops of water in the ocean.

I see infinity and zero superimposed such that infinity is nothing more than two zeros. I see infinity in the Ouroboros – and I struggle to reach my own tail – to become at once infinite and still nothing more than two zeros.infinity symbol

Two zeros side-by-side, like breasts, the pendulous sort I never grew. The sort of breasts I dreamed of as a little girl when I lay in bed at night and felt the tenderness of blossoms on my chest.

Two zeros side-by-side like me, a small zero tucked away in the larger cavern of my mother’s womb, sharing life-blood and oxygen back and forth between our two connected destinies. A moment in the infinite re-production of life stretching back through untold generations of mother giving birth to mother and to mother.

When I look back I see the moments in which I dared not stretch to my full height for fear of being too tall and I see the moments in which I sang oh-so-quietly for fear of being off-key.

I see the moments of lack and they are, each and every one, met by an equal moment of grace: the afternoon I spent at the beach not-thinking, just waiting for my heartbeat to synchronize with the rhythm of the tide.

I see sun drenched days spent on beaches with friends, with family. I see rocks that begged to be climbed until I could stand atop them like a god and know that I was just as infinite as our ever-expanding universe.

When I look back, I see everything.

http://youtu.be/ubqDHAUaMVM

I’d love to hear from you! What do you see when you look back? Let me know in the comments.

The drumbeat in my temples

The first time it happens I think I might be dying.

I’m in third grade. I’m sitting in the classroom and there’s a spot in my vision, a speck that shimmers in the morning light.

At first the speck is small and unimportant and I think that if I ignore it, it will simply go away.

And then it grows.

The spot grows and grows, eating everything in its path. First, a pencil eraser. Then it gobbles up my name, traced in graphite at the top of my worksheet.

It curves, a shimmering blue crescent, a lake of opacity that dominates my sight.

It mesmerises.

—

I’ve never experienced anything like it. No one has ever told me that you can have a shimmering pool of not-quite-moonlight-on-water in your eye that grows and grows, blotting out everything in its path.

I do not interrupt my teacher, not then, not at first. Not so much because I am not frightened, but because I am not certain of what words might be used to describe my problem. I am not sure how to speak of this pounded-silver crescent that has developed in my eye.

I say nothing about this spot and it’s growing-ness. I watch it as it grows until, just at the moment when I am about to panic, it begins, once more, to recede.

Evaporating from its edges like tidal waters dragged out, once more, to sea.

My vision returns.

And then the agony sets in.

—

I go home from school that day and my mother teaches me the word for migraine. She calls my shimmering crescent a “visual aura” and tells me that they come and then go and are followed by a headache.

She gives me Advil and a cup of tea because the caffeine will make the Advil more effective.

It is the day I learn that Advil doesn’t help a migraine. Not even if you take it with caffeine.

—

There will be other migraines after that first one. Several handfuls before I mostly grow out of them somewhere between middle school and high school.

Many will be treated with some Advil and an ineffectual cup of tea.

Some will be so bad that I vomit from the pain.

And it will be many years before I can face the aroma of a simple cup of tea without the echo of a drumbeat in my temples.

I’d love to hear from you! Let me know what you thought of this piece in the comments below 🙂

November 2014 Book Reviews

The holiday season has struck! I’ve spent the last week visiting family in California, and though 16 hours spent flying back and forth across the country would seem like a good thing for my page count — the truth is that I never end up reading as much as I expect to when I’m travelling. That combined with the fact that I’m currently working my way through the Gotham Writer’s Workshop Guide to Writing Fiction, which is taking much longer than powering through a quick and easy novel, means that I’ve not finished nearly as many books as I usually do in a month.

But, they say a picture is worth a thousand words, so I thought I’d make up for my lack of reading with a vista from near my hometown — enjoy!

Patrick's Point State Park

And now on to  this month’s books! My page count comes to just 886 this month.

Disclaimer: This post contains Amazon affiliate links. I make a (very) small referral commission from purchases made using my links. This does not affect your price.

Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert

Dune Messiah by Frank HerbertAfter much waffling, I was convinced to go ahead and read the first three Dune books. This month’s completion of Dune Messiah means I’m officially two for three. Reading Dune Messiah was interesting, because the novel is set up by a foreword by Frank Herbert’s son which rather led me to believe I would find the book frustrating and less enjoyable than Dune. I didn’t find that to be true in the least.

Was Dune Messiah different from Dune? Yes, of course. The characters had aged, matured, and changed, just as characters ought to do. Was the book darker than the first Dune novel? Yes, but again the characters were older and more mature and were faced with problems on a much larger scale. Personally, I found the story as compelling, the world building as careful, and tale as enjoyable as the first Dune novel.

Broken Open by Elizabeth Lesser

Broken Open by Elizabeth Lesser

This month I really enjoyed reading Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow by Elizabeth Lesser. The book teaches lessons about facing life gracefully (particularly life’s downturns) through the medium of story. Both Lesser’s own personal story and the stories of friends, family, and several of her workshop students are explored. It’s a lovely book and I’ve decided to allow Lesser to speak for herself:

“I have trained myself now — when something is not going my way, and I feel rising up within me a big, hard No! — to take a breath or two, and counter that No with different counsel. I tell myself to ‘die to it’…. What must die? Any resistance to the bigger truth. Any holding on by that part of me — my little ego part — that cannot see beyond its own nose…. Practicing dying means living as close to reality as we can in each moment. It is the ultimate bravery.”

That’s what I’ve read this month — how about you? Got a great read I should add to my list? Let me know in the comments below!

 

Tired of waiting for my monthly wrap-ups? I talk about what I’m reading each week in my email newsletter.

This is what I’m thankful for

Happy almost-Thanksgiving! It’s a time when the internet is flooded with musings about two things: turkey and gratitude. And since this isn’t going to be a post about turkey, I thought I’d better make it about gratitude — enjoy!

This is what I’m thankful for

Ten toes tighten in cold sand and I feel the grit scrape against my skin as I’m chilled. A gloomy November sky glowers overhead and the cold Pacific ocean swirls about my toes and sweeps me out to sea and I’m freezing but my heart soars because it knows that this means I’ve come home.

Fingers hover over smooth plastic keys and the cursor blinks at me in a way that should be disconcerting — my wordlessness made comical as the cursor counts the seconds ticking by, each a moment wasted without the writing of a single word. But instead of anger there is stillness because the words are stirring and somewhere deep inside me I know they’re waiting — waiting for the moment I find quiet enough to finally hear their whispers.

The house is cold and I’ve not felt my toes in hours but the water is piping hot and the steam curls up from the mug, dampens as it condenses on cold fingers cupped over the warmth of rising water vapor. I hold the cup in the palms of my hands, raise it to my lips, and sip. I taste the essence of a smile.

Two arms wrap around me strong and warm and I burrow myself into the press of body-upon-body and bask in the rhythm of a heartbeat I know almost like it was my very own. I close my eyes and tighten my grip on the family I hold so very dear.

The first flakes fall and I know it’s winter because the ground goes white and frosted and perfect. The sky opens up and buries old hurts under a fresh new blanket — scrubbed clean and whitewashed, we are made-up and re-created in this moment. The season of imagination looms near, when snow and darkness wrap each house in muffled quiet and dreams of sugarplums come dancing near.

The dawn breaks and night’s grip weakens as the sky is brushed back from black to ever-lightening grey. When I woke the stars still shone, marching ever westward in their dance across the sky. Each light winking out now, as the sun rises to greet the turning of the Earth. A new day dawns and I yet live to see it.

The fragile strength of lungs expands my ribcage, bends soft bones outward until I am larger than the me I was half a breath ago. The poetry of a breath lies in the stillness that awaits — pounding like a heartbeat into the silent passage of air, whispering through the body.

Now, I’d love to hear from you. Let me know what you’re thankful for in the comments below!