I can’t keep up
…but who or what is setting the pace?
‘I can’t keep up.’ For about a month now, that’s been the prevailing thought chasing through my mind. My brain has been a churning, hamster-wheel sort of place.
I can’t keep up with the laundry. I can’t keep up with the beauty standard. I can’t keep up with my inbox, the news, my podcast feed (sidenote: two episodes a week from one podcast is too many. Unless you are a news outlet, please stop!)
I can’t keep up with writers who publish a book a year (or even every other year). I can’t keep up with the school WhatsApp or the weeds in my lawn.
I can’t even keep up with my own newsletter.
At its worst, this can’t-keep-up feeling means everywhere and anywhere I look – around my house, at my phone, out of the window – I see things that require my attention, problems to solve, unfinished tasks and unsatisfied desires. They feel like a reproach, sometimes, all these things. It makes me want to run away.
Like the increasingly rampant tangle of brambles along one side of our house that makes me feel itchy with impatience to hack it away every time I drive or walk past. Which is basically every day.
Or the Sunday paper, languishing on the floor by my desk as I have not yet got round to it. It is – at time of writing – Wednesday.
There are currently no fewer than nine unread magazines strewn between my hallway table, the living room, and the sofa in my office, which I optimistically hope to get to some day (I move them around sometimes, as if this might make the difference). I even bought a copy of Vogue on my way home from seeing The Devil Wears Prada 2, the film having piqued a sort of rebellious nostalgia in me. I was, you see, going to find time to sit and luxuriate in reading it from cover to cover. I was going to be that kind of person again.
Ha. ha. ha.
This isn’t meant to be a poor-me post about not having enough time (at least, I hope I can pull it back from the brink of being that).
I don’t actually think this particular bout of overwhelm is about time management at all, or even the related issue of energy.
But I don’t know exactly what it is about either.
I’m not burnt out this time. I know, rationally, that if I’m time-poor it’s only because I’m trying to do lots of things. Mostly by choice. A week’s holiday at the beginning of the month eased the can’t-keep-up of it all a little – but not as much as I’d hoped.
Is it ageing-millennial panic? Is it inching closer to 40? Is it post-miscarriage hormones? Existential dread? The mental load?
All of the above?
I suppose it begs the question, if I feel like I can’t keep up, then who or what am I trying to keep up with? Answers on a postcard please. (Or in the comments, which I promise I will try to reply to in a timely manner).
As for what to do about it, the answer should be obvious, as someone who runs: slow down. Stop chasing and straining and pushing to keep up with the people ahead of you. Slow it right down until it feels vaguely comfortable. Or, at least, tolerable.
Slow down as much as you need to keep going – and try not to mind about anyone else.
I can really relate to this at the moment. Everywhere I look are things that require my attention, and I feel guilty about the messages from friends and family I just can't find the time to respond to right now. And the longer it goes since I responded the harder it is to respond. Finding balance is so hard. I hope things feel lighter for us both soon. Thank you for writing down how I'm feeling right now and making me feel understood!
This is certainly a feeling I relate to- I always feel behind on something whether at work or home. My mental to-do list is never ending, and I sometimes wonder how much of that behind feeling is related to how I struggle with getting tasks done until there is a sense of urgency!