In the second half of 2014, I was finding life overwhelming. This had a negative impact on my writing – I barely finished my draft for ChaBooCha Lite in September, I have editing that needs to be done that I haven’t got to, there are stories that need to be written that are just sitting in my head or as notes in notebooks, even marketing for Swallow Me, NOW! could be better.
Something has to change in 2015. I’ve already talked about getting back to exercise, now it’s time to look at other things that are overwhelming.
One thing that is causing stress is my email inbox – there are way too many emails in there! I’ve started unsubscribing from email newsletters. In some ways this is sad because a lot of them have great information – I just don’t have time to read them all. One of the main reasons is that I spend all day at work on computers, and evenings writing, that I would prefer to get offline for some of these newsletters, but they are only sent via email. The other thing is some of them are sent way too often!! I’m trying to work out a way to keep track of some of these sites without my email inbox being clogged up.
Another thing is my Facebook newsfeed. There are so many updates that I’m just not interested in reading any more, and the ones I want to read aren’t being seen due to the way Facebook shows updates. I’ve started unliking pages that are no longer relevant and am trying to sort those in my friends list into lists. I’m also leaving groups that are no longer active (many seem to be filling up with spam posts now that the activity they were started for has finished). I’ve also been offline a lot more in the last few days – that has certainly been helping.
There are other social media sites that send me way too many notifications. I’m in the process of turning many of the off so they aren’t cluttering up my email inbox. Most of the emails are more annoying than informative.
Before Christmas, we started a big clean out at home. We have sent at least a dozen big bags of toys and clothes to the op shop and this has meant that I have a lot more storage to put things that were previously cluttering up the place. This has also made a huge difference. Next step is plan somewhere to be my writing space – that is a work in progress.
There are other things too, but these are some of the main ones I’ve started working on. There are other things that are out of my control and I’m hoping that reducing the overwhelm in the things I have control over, I can better cope with those things I have no control over. I’m also hoping that by clearing some of the overwhelm, I will be much more productive this year.
