Letting Go

I'm not good at letting go. I'm not good at giving up anything . . . except, possibly, sleep and other good habits.

I know my sense of depletion is due to being one week out from NaNoWriMo. I know it, intellectually. After all, this happens to me every year. I hit the ground running in December, frantically trying to catch up with all the things I should have been doing last month but wasn't.

My to-do list this weekend was huge. I worked hard. And I barely dented it. I didn't finish as many chapters of my freelance project as I hoped. I didn't get my novel sent off to an online critique partner as I'd have liked to do. I did a fair amount of holiday baking, but didn't get my mom's birthday cookies baked or shipped. (Her birthday is tomorrow. No, today.)

I did dusting and tidying and decorating, but none of those things are completely done. (Are they ever completely done? Of course not! Because no sooner do you stop dusting than you really should start all over again, especially when there's a soft, gorgeous fir in the middle of your living room.) The tree is up and it looks fabulous. The kids have been into the whole experience this year, from the Christmas story to the advent calendar to the tree finding/cutting/decorating to the baking.

Bathrooms will have to wait another couple of days. (I might be an enemy of the earth, but I sure do love Clorox wipes!) Budgeting will have to wait, too. Holy cow, we're a week into December and still working off November's budget. And December's hardly a typical month! At least we're still OK . . . because I certainly haven't been doing any Christmas shopping!

As we tell Ellie: Stop. Take a deep breath. Relax.

I know I'm depleted from writing an entire novel in November. I know that this is a crazy-busy time of year at the best of times. And I know that it seems unmanageable now because I am (and will continue to be) sleep deprived.

We aren't having a big Christmas open house this year. I've let go of the Christmas cards, too. (We usually send a hundred.) But there's still Christmas present list-making and planning, crafts, things to ship all over the place, and a ton of yard work left to do.

Book club's tomorrow. Today. And I'm supposed to be teaching the Christmas Story to kindergartners and first graders at Bible study Wednesday night.

Stop. Take a deep breath. Relax.

Focus on: Ada coming home from preschool last week and explaining the advent wreath to me. (They took a little field trip down the hall to the sanctuary.) Last week at LOGOS the kindergartners and first graders listened to James Taylor's Some Children See Him and drew pictures of how they "see" baby Jesus. Most of the babies were white, often with blond hair and blue eyes. Ellie's picture was green with polka dots.

Prepare.