The Sum of All Effort

I can’t believe it’s been almost a year since I wrote last. But a glance at my old posts assures me that it has indeed been an age since I did. So much has happened in the meanwhile; my brother got married, my best friend did the same, my nieces can now string words into cohesive sentences, nearly all my friends from undergrad entered their 3^rd year of working life… and almost all of them are travelling to exotic places. And I’m most assuredly happy for all of them. Although, I’m sure on a bad day I’d envy everyone in the above list (I mean, who wouldn't be envious of my baby nieces who can not only do the 'adorable talk' but also ballet their worries away??!) but in this moment sitting here in a lakeside café, I’m just happy to be me. Good ol’ “ambling-through-life” me. A part of me does balk at the word ‘ambling’, because it denotes a sense of slowness and life right now is anything but. Maybe I should just change it to something positive like “stopping to smell the flowers” or the more fitting “procrasta-living"? hmmmm. High on chai latte and incapable of making any executive decisions maybe I’ll keep them all. “Ambling through life and smelling the flowers sometimes, but mostly just procrastinating”. Yea, let’s go with that. 

So where does the beginning of August find me? Third week into my final semester of law school that’s where. The semester that will decide the sum of all my efforts so far. Cue last semester blues – all kinds of self-doubt, "how did it get late so soon?, should I have majored in Anthropology and Literature as an undergrad? would it have served me better? Is the big Law firm really for me?" etc etc. Feeling decidedly overwhelmed with the colossal amount of work I have to do and the places I have to apply to. If only awareness and knowledge of my "to-do" list could guarantee action! I’d definitely make a good case study for sociologists wanting to research the ‘knowledge-action’ gap. Cue - worrying, staying up late, waking up late, making lists, getting worried because of list, wondering why i'm still in college and trying to snooze my chores away. Sum of total effort or lack thereof, most definitely equals zero. Stress and worry have me physically paralysed.Yay, to self-awareness!

So how did today, turn out not to be such a bad day? Well, maybe it’s because I leveled with mother dearest on the phone. I told her everything that I had to do.  And she told me the order in which I should do them.  Maybe that’s the secret. Maybe we (or maybe just me) need our mothers to tell us what to do until we get a handle on life again.  I also just called myself ‘Bambi’ as typed that. Yea I’m having a Bambi day, but that’s ok, because doe eyed deers are cute. Being told what to do gave me some respite from actually thinking about the same and for the first time in days, self-doubt and I parted ways.

Anyway, I have only just ticked one of the four major things I have to do today but it’s satisfying. And it got me to thinking, hard work and maybe just working really hard on one little thing is perhaps its own reward. Even when the sum of all effort equals ticking one seemingly 'insignificant' thing on your mammoth list, it can render you incapable, if only for one sunny afternoon, of being envious of comrades, the richer, debt-free, better travelled friends. It's all about believing in your own work,  running your own race and knowing that everyone including you are exactly where you're meant to be. It's about starting somewhere on that endless list of readings, chores and job applications and staking claim to the result. Maybe one day, even my happy place will be upgraded to a sunnier more Pina Colda friendly environment. Uptill then, its enough knowing that productivity has a way of making me my own biggest fan, and it's the only thing that can stem the last semester blues.

I also realised that being holed up in my room gets me nowhere but to anxiety town so I drove down to a lakeside café. And I actually completed a tutorial due tomorrow midst murmurs, business meetings and my favorite lakeside characters – the gulls. To be surrounded by life is a wonderful thing.

(Lake Burley Griffin, Canberra)

Plan for the rest of the day is to actually sit down and draw up that timetable I’ve convinced myself will be the end of all my problems, catch up on a lecture and make a start on my 220 page article for a presentation due in a couple of days.

Writing this made me realize that I actually do get some peace from condensing all these thoughts on paper (blog) so I’ll  make an effort do it more often. For now, I sign off slightly (as opposed to alarmingly) overwhelmed …with a chance of finding my feet somewhere on the horizon.

Ps. As I signed in to read other blogs, I happened across the stats for mine. I actually have people (other than myself!) reading this. *mind blown *and Thank You for stopping by!