One Thing at a Time

The wood floor pressed into my spine to make up the first time in several days I was still while awake. I have a lot of trouble sitting still. Just ask my husband. It drives him crazy. We get settled to watch a movie, and then I am up to get a drink, and then I am up to get another cushion, and then I am up to get a snack...You get the picture. This, perhaps, is why yoga appeals to me so much. You move and move and move and then, your bones and ligaments all stretched and aligned, you stop moving. And you stop thinking and you exist.

Kim, my teacher at yoga bliss, reminded us at the end of class on Saturday to only try to do one thing at a time.

As you can imagine, I have trouble with this. I like to dabble here, then there, then over here. Even when I write, I am tempted to jump ahead and write the ending, and I am thinking about what I will write next. When I am talking in a group, I have to work really hard not to eavesdrop on two conversations at once while I am enjoying talking to a third. As a mother, I feel this often backfires, for the constant interruptions on top of my natural inclination to try to do a bunch of things at once means I don't get anything accomplished very quickly at all. Wouldn't I be better off to just do one thing and get it finished, then move to the next?

So this week I made an early New Year's resolution. One thing at a time. One thing. Even if I hear my e-mail in box ding, even if the kids are saying "Mommy, where's my noonie?" Unless someone is bleeding or on fire, I will focus on the task at hand and then, when I am finished, I will move to the next thing.

It is hard. I so want to run across the room for a second to button a shirt and then get back to doing the dishes. But, just for now, I am going to rinse the suds off of this particular dish, I am going to fold this particular sock, and then, then, I will get to the demand. The thing I have observed is that if I stay focused and finish my task, the kids figure out for themselves where the lost toy is. They decide for themselves what kind of shirt they want to put on. They work out their arguments. There are exceptions, of course. Like when there's an explosive diaper or someone is about to put the dog's eye out. But I have learned the number of times I drop what I am doing to serve another isn't always necessary.

Another nice side effect is I involve the kids in what I am doing. Yesterday, Ryan and Charlotte scrubbed pots and pans in the sink while I loaded the dishwasher. They had a great time and contributed to the effort. I had the satisfaction of actually entering the lunch hour without any dishes in the sink. These might sound like mundane concerns for one with a master's degree, but all you doctoral moms out there can relate, I am sure. An ordered house is an ordered mind. Mine is too often in chaos, on more than one level.

So the experiment continues, and we'll see where it leads. Namaste.