Pipe dream?

I WANT to start the year right but now I wonder if I’m in trouble.

After New Year lunch, I spent the day doing the laundry and then I went to the pharmacy to buy my parents’ monthly medications. My sister who stood next to me at the pharmacy counter looked at me and said, “What do you think this means for us that we are at the pharmacy on the first day of the year?”

I just looked at her and smiled. I’m not a superstitious person. I don’t try to read into events and incidents. I have a practical mind— most times.

I did what I did because I thought it was the perfect time to do it. As our stores and offices were closed, I had time to do the laundry. I thought it was a good time to go to the pharmacy because I didn’t think anyone would think of spending the New Year there. And I was right. There was no queue.

If only every day could be like this— streets empty of cars and people. No crowds. No traffic. No phone calls to take. No operational problems to solve. No deadlines to meet. No employees to discipline. No customers to please. No inanities happening at work. Really, I could be a lot nicer if I had less stress on a daily basis.

But my sister says my scenario of a perfect day is not good for the economy. She’s right. There goes my practical mind. When I follow my heart, my brain doesn’t always come al ong.

But most days, I’m ruled by practicality. After Christmas lunch, I decide to clean my office but I got so carried away with my cleaning (as always) that this continued in the next two days. I stopped (finally) because I got scratches, cuts and allergies. So the Christmas cleaning is on hiatus.

So now, I feel like I’m in trouble because I declared that this year, I would work less and sleep more. I am sleeping more but working less is a little hard to do. I confess it’s not easy to break an addiction.

Working less gives me as much stress as working more because working less makes me feel so much less efficient and that gives me anxiety. It kills me to know I didn’t get the work done as scheduled but I know I just have to breathe, relax and let it go if I want to live another day.

So I’m really doing the daunting thing— letting go of the need to be supremely efficient, perfect and ahead of schedule. Well, I’m so behind schedule these days, anyway. But that does give me nightmares at night. So, every day is still a struggle.

“My goal is to create a life I don’t need a vacation from,” I post on my wall. My father once asked me, “Do you get headaches while on vacation?” “No, “I reply, “but as soon as the plane touches down in Mactan, I get a headache.”

I fly away on vacation often for my own sanity. I know I’ll get that life one day— the one that doesn’t need a vacation from. I just don’t know whether I will be awake or asleep when it happens.