This is now going to be my mantra. I have been considering others for many years, they have come, they have gone. But this one, it is a good one to live by.

I think that what makes me and most people anxious is that we lump several days’ activities together and then become overwhelmed. The brain, it has a hard time taking in that much sensory data.

Back in the days of cave people, all they had to think about was how to get their next meal. We now have to think about how we are going to have to get the money for the meal, what we are going to eat, where we are going to eat it, when

Sorting books at the Meeting House

might it be ready, and why we are going to all this trouble. This is why take out is good, but then others, who are preparing our meals, have to deal with the same questions.

Eating, sleeping, recreating, making a buck, it all takes its toll.

Me, I was doing really well when I spent my mornings writing, my afternoons working/playing with my animals, and my evenings reading. It was very easy to take things one day at a time because one day was much like the next.

What happened? Maybe this is not the question I should be considering because this now has no bearing on my now radically different days. The question is, rather, how might I embrace my mantra?

This is not going to be as easy as endlessly repeating this mantra because when I stop, I will be even more overwhelmed than previously, having spent all that time mantra-ing.

The best I can figure is to make daily lists and focus on doing what needs to be done on that given day.
Planning ahead just isn’t going to work. My computer files are a mess and will never be straightened out. In other words, I am going to have to fake being organized.

Today I went with Milena to Talkeetna, and we worked on book project particulars. We came up with a Monday meeting agenda and a list of possible grant items. I made sure to write everything down, and tonight I wrote up and sent her a meeting agenda.

I was doing just fine – I had a respite from book project stuff as we organized a seed catalogue with a seed bank at the Talkeetna Public Library. Then on the way back, Milena got a call from someone who’d read an article about her First Wave Book Project in the Alaska Native News publication. The callers said that they had a U-Haul full of books and two sheds of books and would we take them?

I watched Milena’s eyes light up as the voice emanated from her cell phone. When she hung up, I said, “that’s a lot of books,” to which she said “yeah.” She was not at all overwhelmed. Maybe (ahh haa) this is because she’s a logistics expert, and as such, has experience in taking on these kinds of things. Me, no.

Now, my only salvation is my new mantra. One Day at a Time. It is right now most fitting.

Next: 56. 2/26/22: Whelmed