Ever have days where you feel so breathless from the list in your mind you just stop and chuckle helplessly? 

Sometimes I feel like I’m on a merry go round that isn’t very merry and is spinning so fast my face is doing that thing when your gums flap away from your teeth. It’s funny in movies, but uncomfortable in real life.

Today is shaping up to be that way. It actually started yesterday around three pm, but it’s about to get so much busier.

Today the schedule is leave the house about 745, drive 40 minutes to one job site, then 50 min to another site, then back to clinic for one pm. See people until five pm, then go home, relieve babysitter and figure out supper, and maybe spend an hour with my kids before putting them to bed.

Oh, who am I kidding? Supper is totally going to be Tim Hortons drive through.

I find whenever I schedule more than two things in a day I start to hyperventilate a little. I hate being late, and anyone who knows me probably notices how cranky I get if I’m not at least ten minutes early. But in my line of work, time often gets away on me, through no fault of my own or anyone else’s. 

Either someone is late, or we fit them in because it’s important. I find being on time is one of those little stressors that wears me down. Having no control over time is a fact of life, but is my Achilles heel. It makes my chest feel tight until the moment I catch up or finish my list for the day.

I think that’s why scheduling too many things in one day panics me. The feeling that time will get away, roll all over me, and crush me underneath it’s weight.

Time is such an interesting concept. Humans have tried to yoke it, capturing it on wrists and walls in the form of clocks. Dividing it up precisely into microseconds.

But all of that is fake, contrived. Time is a thing we can never catch or hold in our hands no matter what we do. It continues inexorably forward through moments too fast that we wish we could keep forever, but too slow through the moments we would erase if we could.

The only true time is that around us. The seasons change in their own time, the sun and moon light our days honestly, with raw beauty.

So I remind myself today to take a deep breath when time feels like it’s pressing down, to look outside at the sky and feel the air on my face. And remind that time is not mine to order about or capture.

And maybe I will begin to believe it, accept that time flows around me and it’s not up to me. 

I’m working on it