Things Left Undone
Mondays are my "usual" days for sabbath time. Unfortunately, I have struggled with the concept of "a day off" for the bulk of my time as a priest. Today was no exception. By 9:15 a.m., I could feel myself sliding into a bit of a frenzy about things needing to be done between today and the end of the week. I looked at my handy-dandy web-based "to do" list and panicked just a bit. Even with my less-than-perfect project management skills, I immediately recognized that many items would go undone until next week (or beyond) unless I tackled them TODAY!
I charged over to the office, fired up the computer, cleared the desk of paper...and I was off to the races. Thirty minutes later, I was stuck. The top task on the list was now hopelessly tangled in a mess of delays -- technological and otherwise. I wanted desperately to stick to the task until it was FINISHED! But clearly that would be a misguided attempt at stubbornness. How I longed to close even one loop, to check off even one item and remove it from the list! For me, having an item "in progress" didn't count as getting one DONE! So I moved to the next task. The results? Not much better.
Oh, and in the time I was working to eradicate two tasks which were far more complicated than I had originally envisioned, guess what? Yes. Several new tasks appeared in the forms of e-mail requests to process, phone calls to be returned and forgotten tasks suddenly getting remembered. Grumble. Grumble.
When I have days like today, I often ask myself the question, "How in the world do people in high pressure exec-type jobs ever manage to meet the stampeding herds of to-do's and effectively deal with them without being trampled?" As soon as I consider this question, I immediately begin to think about the ways in which my work, by comparison, is fairly manageable. I mean, I do work for an organization that uses eternity as its horizon! Doesn't working for the Church entail a different sort of pace -- a pace of a more "spiritual" sort? Aren't clergy called to model appropriate ways of dealing with stress? Great. Now I can heap some guilt about feeling stressed on top of everything else!
So, after three and a half hours of frantic non-productivity,
I opted for reclaiming today as sabbath.
Too little. Too late.
Then I decided to address one last "to do".
And yes, in keeping with the theme of the day,
That one is undone as well!
Mondays are my "usual" days for sabbath time. Unfortunately, I have struggled with the concept of "a day off" for the bulk of my time as a priest. Today was no exception. By 9:15 a.m., I could feel myself sliding into a bit of a frenzy about things needing to be done between today and the end of the week. I looked at my handy-dandy web-based "to do" list and panicked just a bit. Even with my less-than-perfect project management skills, I immediately recognized that many items would go undone until next week (or beyond) unless I tackled them TODAY!
I charged over to the office, fired up the computer, cleared the desk of paper...and I was off to the races. Thirty minutes later, I was stuck. The top task on the list was now hopelessly tangled in a mess of delays -- technological and otherwise. I wanted desperately to stick to the task until it was FINISHED! But clearly that would be a misguided attempt at stubbornness. How I longed to close even one loop, to check off even one item and remove it from the list! For me, having an item "in progress" didn't count as getting one DONE! So I moved to the next task. The results? Not much better.
Oh, and in the time I was working to eradicate two tasks which were far more complicated than I had originally envisioned, guess what? Yes. Several new tasks appeared in the forms of e-mail requests to process, phone calls to be returned and forgotten tasks suddenly getting remembered. Grumble. Grumble.
When I have days like today, I often ask myself the question, "How in the world do people in high pressure exec-type jobs ever manage to meet the stampeding herds of to-do's and effectively deal with them without being trampled?" As soon as I consider this question, I immediately begin to think about the ways in which my work, by comparison, is fairly manageable. I mean, I do work for an organization that uses eternity as its horizon! Doesn't working for the Church entail a different sort of pace -- a pace of a more "spiritual" sort? Aren't clergy called to model appropriate ways of dealing with stress? Great. Now I can heap some guilt about feeling stressed on top of everything else!
So, after three and a half hours of frantic non-productivity,
I opted for reclaiming today as sabbath.
Too little. Too late.
Then I decided to address one last "to do".
And yes, in keeping with the theme of the day,
That one is undone as well!
posted by FrGaryB | 4:22 PM
1 Comments:
Sabbath is hard in our family. My husband is a pastor. It seems something always comes up. But, if he doesn't practice Sabbath, how does he teach others about it? It's hard, but I believe clergy must have a break. The work you do is too important and without taking a break you get run down.
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