I don't care for sugar, honey

When I was in kindergarten, my teacher told my mom that I’d been keeping a ‘carpet schedule’. A few girls asked me to sit by them everyday at reading time and, Catholic five-year old that I was, I began to feel a creeping panic each day prior to our carpet sit. To solve the problem, I created my first-ever spreadsheet, my crude crayoning giving each of my four best friends equal time next to me.

This is my first memory of maximizing situations - I overanalyze situations that didn’t need to be analyzed at all, ‘fix’ things that weren’t really in trouble. Any other kindergartener would have sat wherever she pleased, not thinking for a second that it would make a long-term impact (I guarantee you, those girls don’t remember my name, much less that they wanted to sit by me) but I maximized the situation by making the schedule.

As I grew up, this small problem grew into a pretty enormous guilt complex. As a result, I try to cram things and people in where they don’t belong. And when I leave these forced appointments, I don’t ever feel less guilty. I just remember the next person I have been bad at keeping in touch with, the next invite I haven’t accepted. My guilt is on a loop, and the one person I’ve just pleased or date I’ve just kept is recycled again to the bottom of the list.

Yesterday, I nearly drove off the side of a parking structure. It was snowy, the visibility was crap, the structure was not well laid out but mostly, I was rushing from a pre-work coffee meeting that I’d set up with an old co-worker. I didn’t have time for this meeting, and she never asked me to make the time. It was just me, with my grown-up carpet schedule – it’s now a full-blown mental list of people I love but don’t see, that I try to juggle in the best way I know how.

I don’t think there’s a clearer signal that it's time to slow down and take control than your windshield shattering onto your lap, while your car edges over a 15-foot drop-off. Once I was able to breathe and get out of my car, I knew it was time to reevaluate. Time to not only acknowledge that I can’t be everything to everyone, but to act on that knowledge. To say the words, “Sorry I can’t” without remorse or second thought.

So I’m starting with this blog. This blog is a time-suck. I don’t have time for this blog. I won’t be participating fully in any of the challenges that are popping up for the year’s end. You, my seven readers, are the easy part of my new personal pact. I have very little remorse for abandoning you on these challenges, which I think has to be a sign of a healthy web presence/reliance.

Next up are the purging of my Facebook invites, closely followed by the deletion of all voicemails I've been meaning to return. I will archive the emails that sit in my inbox, whispering "Four days and no reply? Why are you such a terrible friend?" There will be no more coffee dates tucked in between other engagements.

I do think you're great, internet friends. But now you know my deep, dark secret- I'm the gold medalist in guilt. This year, I'm taking myself out of the running.