How Do We Do It?

I've been asked a few times recently "how do you do it?" mostly with a look of wonder/puzzlement on the face of the individual asking.  The simple answer would be that I don't do it all, my kitchen is usually a mess, the bathrooms are in need of a major scrub (spot cleaning happens more regularly), and the clean laundry waiting to be folded and put away is almost a bigger pile than the laundry needing to be cleaned.

I believe we all work well under different levels of stress, and that the type of stress can also factor in.  "Good" stress for me might be "bad" stress for someone else, though there are probably a few universal "bad" stresses out there.

Good stresses in my life (in no particular order), just a few samples:

• my son's somewhat constant desire to be the centre of attention.  He's just over 20 months.  It's how he shows his love for us, or atleast that's what I choose to believe. 
• piles of clean laundry--I may dislike "laundry diving," but it means that at some point I had time to do a few loads of laundry while accomplishing other tasks.  This means I will probably be able to "multitask" again in the near future and continue to have clean clothes (note:  I tend to only buy clothes that I can machine wash and dry or hang to dry, and that do not require a lot of pressing to look good).
• balancing a busy schedule.  I enjoy being involved in the organizations and informal groups I'm involved in and tend to make time for them at least once a month.  I have a desire to be part of these communities, and recognize that over time "new" communities will become part of my calendar--especially as Ian gets older. 

Bad stresses (not always present, but too much at a time results in very little being accomplished):

• loosing my day planner.  I may not always look at it, but I need to know where it is.  I lost one a few years ago that had a lot of important information in it. It caused me a lot of stress, mostly because I had no idea where I had left it.  So I bought a new one, which I misplaced last month temporarly.  This time I went strait to the office supply store and bought a simple replacement before I really even had time to panic.
• not finding what I'm looking for.  I can hear my mom's voice already (sorry mom) saying "if you put things in the same place all the time they won't be lost so easily."  In reality, I've gotten a lot better at this--keys go in the bowl, if they are not in my jacket pocket, and these stresses are reducing as a result.
• "day job" stress--unfortuntately a bit of a "can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em" situation.  Every work situation will have a bit of stress, I don't know of any business that doesn't stress their employees out every now and then.  But it's how we choose to handle the stress that makes the difference.  We either choose to let it roll off and do our best to ignore whatever the issues are that cause the stress (sometimes easier said than done), we can focus on the negative so much that it affects our lives outside of work (sometimes the "easy" thing to do), or we can carefully pick our battles and decide which parts of work are okay to deal with, and which ones are deal breakers--which means deciding at which point a deal breaker means looking for a new job.

I think Tiffany Han (life coach, blogger, etc.) put it well today with her Friday Confession:  I have doubts (click to read--CAUTION LANGUAGE WARNING).

So "how do (I) do it?" I'm not sure.  Would I do it all again?  Heck Yes!

~Desirae