I just got back from getting a massage, and I feel like THIS.

You’re judging me, right?

Dude, a few years ago I would totally have judged me.

Oh how nice for her, precious little prissypants, getting a massage because she doesn’t have a real job.  I bet she puts her feet up on her velvet footstool and eats bonbons, too, before she eats endangered whale caviar off her silver spoon.  

(Except I don’t think there is such a thing as whale caviar. Because…science.)

Back then, when I would have judged me, I was tired, I was cranky, and I was cranking and cranking.  One time I demanded in exasperation of my two-year-old, “What has to happen for someone to take care of ME around here?!?!?”

And 48 hours later, I got a sudden ear infection so severe that my eardrum burst in the night.

True story.

(In case you’re wondering, it hurt more than childbirth.)

I let my own tender pink flesh rupture, people.  Because THAT’s what had to happen for me to get some care around here.

You know what I needed?

A massage.

Am I saying that massages keep you healthy and if you get them regularly you won’t get sick?  Of course not!  Because I am not an MD and please insert all other disclaimers that apply.

But I am saying that I believed, on some subconscious level, that the only time I got any tender care was if I got sick.  Really sick.  102 degree fever?  No dice, I still had to take care of my baby. Throwing up and fainting?  Nah, I handled that just fine when I was pregnant, so off to the studio I went!  Burst eardrum?  Well…. the doctor did blanch and shudder when he looked in my ear…. so maaaaybe I got to rest for 24 hours.

Isn’t that crazy?  But I bet a lot of you, especially you mothers working doubletime (ie being moms and also bringing in income), are nodding your heads right now.

I was talking with a friend on the phone last week and she asked me, “How do you get it all DONE?”

And I thought about it.  I almost said, “I DON’T!”  ~which is true.  Plenty gets undone.  But I could also sense that I had learned something, sort of, at least more than I knew back when my eardrum had to rend its garments in protest just to get me to lie down.

I think it goes back to our conversation the past few weeks, about how important it is to schedule things so that they’ll keep happening on their own.  This is true not just for fun with friends and moments to savor, but with everything you want to happen.

This is why I get a monthly massage.

Why I get my house cleaned twice a month.

Why I do my nails every time I watch a new episode of The Good Wife.

Now hang on a minute while we take a reality check detour.

See, for years I had read that you should schedule things into your calendar if you wanted them to happen.  I’d laugh bitterly and throw a martini glass at the wall every time I heard that, and utter dark oaths that would make your mama blush.  (Just kidding. I don’t drink martinis.)

Sure, I’d think, yeah, okay, I could schedule things.  No problem.  But I might as well be writing on the sky with cotton candy, for all the good it will do.

See, all my carefully blocked-off time spots were consistently obliterated by crises, last-minute appointments, and my own absent-mindedness.

And so I’d give up.  What I didn’t realize was that when you switch over to deliberately blocking off your schedule according to the things that are truly important to you, there will be a certain period of time where you’re still catching up. You’re still trying to just get to zero.  Before you can get to the place where each new week is a blank slate waiting to be filled with beautiful drawings, you probably have a lot of chalk dust to wipe up.  Also plenty of random pigeon shit.  In other words, it will take an extra burst of energy to get to the point where that kind of planning can even work.

Don’t run away!!!  Stay with me!!!  Put down the scotch, all hope is not lost!

This is where we tackle the uncomfortable topic of how to get through the backlog of any part of your life that you’ve let run into the ground.

Haven’t kept up on your bookkeeping?  You probably hate everything, especially your accountant, right about now.  Don’t exercise for oh, say, two years?  Your body ain’t gonna snap back into shape right away, no matter how many times you ran in the woods this week.  (I hate this one especially.)  Slide into the slump of February and still have holiday thank-yous on your to-do list even though it’s also time to book summer camps?  What?!?  Who, me?!?!??  Sorry, Aunt Mitsuko!

So before we can leap into golden fields of blissful time management, there may be some messes to clean up.  I teach a whole six-week class on cleaning up your messes.  It’s called The Queen Sweep, and it’s royally fabulous.  But here’s a quick cheat sheet.

There are two ways to handle Immense Backlogs Of Things:

The generally agreed-upon method is Method Number One, but I have to tell you that it hardly ever works for me.  Except for sometimes recently when the sun is shining and the birds are singing just right.  The theory is that you do it one grain at a time. First, isolate the pile of whatever needs doing, whether it’s a mountain of receipts or a legal pad of action items.  Pick up one, and deal with it.  Then, pick up another.  Set a timer, and do a little bit every day.  Eventually you get it finished and then you’re 112 and have no more teeth.

Method Number Two is more dramatic, and tends to work better for impatient little ole me. We’ll call it the Drama Queen Sweep.  It involves blocking off a big chunk of time, say three or six hours, and just doing as much as you can–put on music and work like crazy–and then, when your time’s up, you walk away.  Yup, even if you’re not done.  Even if it’s shoddy.  Even if it means you just throw away the tupperware in the fridge that is growing alien life forms and you burn the clothes that you are never, but never, going to get altered.  You just decide that you and your beautiful life are going to have to go on without things being perfect.

The missing piece is that for some of us, before we can ever use Method Number One, where our systems hum along smoothly, we’re going to first have to do some bigtime Drama Queening. 

And after you do something really superhuman using either of the methods above?  You have to do something extra-nice for yourself.  No, really.  No, SERIOUSLY. It does not have to be expensive.  It could be reading fashion magazines on the couch with a cup of tea.  But if you keep cranking forward without pausing and rewarding yourself, YOUR EARDRUMS WILL BURST.

Just kidding.  Maybe.  But your body will protest in one way or another.

So if you hear me talk about regular massages and how soaking up the sunshine is one of my main priorities for the day (as it was yesterday), just know that this dreamy relationship with my calendar did not happen in a week.  It took some time, and [WF_CLEANUP], and a whole lot of being a Drama Queen.  And being ok with some things just not getting done.

But it’s amazing how when I proactively schedule in some dreamy time, and also some focused work time, everything runs better.  And when I do something that’s hard AND I consistently reward myself, I’m much more willing to tackle the next hard thing that comes along.

So please answer these two questions:

What is ONE regularly recurring pleasurable activity that you could put on your calendar right now?  

What is ONE tangled mess that would feel AMAZING to get rid of? 

Boom.  The answer to those questions, taken together, is some serious rocket fuel.

This is why so much self-help stuff doesn’t stick, because it only addresses one or the other– the big dreamy dreams or the horrible dreaded tasks.  When you look at both at the same time, something happens.  You stretch.  You get bigger.  You start to get epic things moving.

So tell me on Facebook what would have to happen, what kind of support you’d need, to make both of those things happen. No, really, I want to know.  Tag my name so I see your post.

In the meantime, I’ll be out on the grass, soaking up the sun and the pink petals.

much love,

Anna