“That’s Tricky Grandma” – Multitasking or Just Peacefully Do The Next Right Thing – Step 3 and Step 11, Perfectionism

Multitasking has been the name of my game. My husband lives with it. My kids laugh about it. Now, to my total dismay my grandchildren are discovering it. And frankly, I’d like to recover from it! Cooking and ____, cleaning and ____, sitting in Church and_____, visiting and____, watching TV, the game, the baby and_____, driving and_____, eating and ____ and ____ and ____!!!!! There is practically nothing I won’t try to put together in combination so I can GET MORE DONE! I use to think it was an amazing gift, but now I’m beginning to wonder.

A few months ago I hauled a small TV/video player into the family room and placed it next to the family TV. I stuck an exercise video into the small TV and also turned on something I needed to watch on the family TV. I proceeded to exercise, with one eye on the video exercise instructor and another on the family TV. Just toward the end of my workout/TV show Granddaughter Sammy entered the room. “Grandma, are you exercising AND watching TV? (pause, giggle giggle) That’s tricky!”

I laughed with her, finished up and went and got my little notebook. Children have a way of calling it like it is. “Tricky” means “requiring skill, difficult to manage.” I agree with the dictionary. Either my age or my recovery experience, maybe both, seem to be hedging the way between me and my hunger to do it all and do it all at once. I’m starting to understand that a life driven by the need to always be “killing two birds with one stone” is an unfocused, frantic, confusing, fear based, task driven life, and that eventually, one of the dead birds might be me!

I’ll never forget the words my son said to me, years ago. As he helped me into the car with my bags full of projects, just before taking off for a wonderfully planned trip with my husband he said, “What’s all this mom?” I shared with him the nature of my “carry-ons.” His reply, “You must not think you’re going to have a very good time!”

It’s interesting that the word “multitask” is a word my computer will accept but I can’t find in any of the dictionaries around the house. Perhaps it’s a modern word that accompanies modern ailments like addiction and depression and anxiety. Just a thought!

I’ve decided it’s best to leave the multitasking up to the Lord. He is the master economist when it comes to accomplishing more than one thing at every given moment. If I go about peacefully doing the next right thing, one thing at a time, I know multiple things will be accomplished. But, it will not be the result of my being a one-woman show, a three-ring circus. It will be His miracle and I will know it! I won’t say at the end of the day as I run down my list, “Look at me, see what I managed to do in two’s and three’s.” I will say, “Wow! I was just doing the next right thing and look what else God accomplished with me!”

By Nannette W.
Posted Monday, November 10, 2008

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