Hecticity Ahead

Did I just create a new word by writing Hecticity in the title?  I mean being in a hectic state.  Hecticity--sounds like electricity.

On Saturday, I wrote to my English history enthusiast friends on the occasion of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth, the first one, centuries ago.  I said, "How shall we festivize this event?"

Festivize--a word I will love more than hecticity.  Festivizing is fun.  Enduring hecticity is not.

Our psychologist friends would tell me that when we tolerate hecticity, it must be working for us on some level.  Why do so many of us endure and even embrace hecticity?

Is it because we feel important when our to-do lists stretch long?  Is it because we want to be all things to all people?  We don't want to let anyone down?

Maybe we haven't done the work that it takes to get our priorities straight in the truest way.

For many of us, this will be a week of travel.  For many of us, this will be a week of lots of cooking.  Some of us will brave stores and do major shopping.

We may not take the time to do the activities that are most important to us.  Unfortunately, for many of us, this condition can last until the new year. 

As we move through the next few weeks, let's take notes so that next year we can remember what we treasured and perhaps we can toss the rest.  Let's take notes about the creative projects we wish we had time to attend to--that way, we have notes to refer to in January or February, when time becomes our own a bit more.  Let's do a bit of journaling so that when we're older, we remember these holiday times in more detail.

For many of us, it may be too late to make decisions about how we'll spend our Thanksgiving week.  But it may not be too late to do some planning for the weeks after Thanksgiving.  If we carve out some time to plan for the weeks between Thanksgiving and New Year's, maybe we won't arrive at 2013 in a state of complete exhaustion.

I'll have blog posts with ideas for how to plan/budget coming on Friday and Saturday.  For now, I have Thanksgiving prep of my own to be completing.  But maybe, before I do that, I'll take some time to write a poem. 

And if you need a poetic inspiration for prioritizing, see today's post on The Writer's Almanac.  The poem by Louise Erdrich is FABULOUS!  Here's a taste:

"Don't patch anything. Don't mend. Buy safety pins.

Don't even sew on a button.
Let the wind have its way, then the earth
that invades as dust and then the dead
foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch.
Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome."