I know one other person who schedules her life full. She’s my best friend in Minnesota (no offense meant to my other best friends in Minnesota…). There have to be more of us. I know there are more of us. I just don’t know where they are. Probably too busy to be reading this hot mess.

The last three weeks I have been sitting amongst moving boxes. First the boxes of the house I was moving from, then the boxes here at the house I have moved into. That’s not totally true–I was living out of suitcases of clothes and sundries plus plastic bins of hair ties and makeup, and all the other stuff that a person might need, for an indefinite period of time staying in a girlfriend’s extra bedroom. Who would have predicted I’d be homeless for a month between homes? Not I.

The last few weeks I have had deadlines for the anthology I am editing and publishing, trying to get certified to coach tennis, closed on a house and moved all my worldly goods into my new home. I’ve been juggling compiling the stories for the anthology (Windows of Light by Nikkei Write Now!), with putting stuff I’ve moved from Minnesota and the house where the rabbits gather (translation of Pueblo Puye), into what I THOUGHT was a bigger house only to find I have more than enough stuff to fill a house and a half.

What happened to all that work Mai Zimmy did, torturing me through not one, but two or three Swedish Death Cleaning videos? I dumped SO MUCH STUFF! Goodwill and the church charity were ready to cut me off. And now I am finding I don’t have the space for a couple of my favorite pieces of furniture.

Something had to give, and it was my writing. Probably the most important thing for a writer, but, I let life get in the way. I had deadlines (not writing deadlines) get in the way.

Am I overbooked? Usually I can keep the balls I am juggling up in the air, but the last couple of days, not so much. I talk to my bestie in Minnesota, and we commiserate on the state of our lives. Few people get as much done as we do, and some would say it comes at a cost.

What is the cost I am paying? I don’t sleep well. I never have–literally, I cannot recall a time I had a stretch of full, eight-hour periods of sleep.

Jobs I have don’t get my full attention. That may be true. I have always been a multi-tasker.

I have sacrificed having a significant other. That is also true, but I’d like to change that if I could. I dropped a dating app because I was gone so much. It could be time to pick that one back up.

My life is full. I live in chaos. Every day is an adventure. I never know for sure where I will find my extra set of car keys or my bike lock, but I know they are packed in one of the forty boxes I have yet to touch. Too much to do, too little time.

And I love my life.

I know for a fact that if I live long enough, there will be a time when my life won’t be so full. It won’t matter where the car keys or the bike lock are, because I won’t be needing either. And if we are going down that path, I won’t need three sets of ski boots, multiple skis, multiple tennis racquets and the clothes that go with each sport. I am holding fast to the chaos in my life for as long as possible.

I know for a fact that there will be a time I won’t need much more than the TV remote control.

Wherever that might be.

I think I will invent a remote control tether. It will work like those mitten clips that kids have so they don’t lose their mittens.

I’d make millions. Like I don’t have enough to do.