I bet the insects that get caught in carnivorous plant have that same thought just before diving into an insidious trap that slowly eats them alive.

I mean that’s the point, right?

Life isn’t an insidious trap on it’s own – I choose to believe – but becomes one by our thoughts, actions, and eagerness … and, I guess, greed.

Stop. Don’t worry, this isn’t a preaching post about how one should think less on money and more on their fellow man. If you think money comes before all else – you are, probably, not reading my blog.

No, this is more about the traps we lay for ourselves in our intentions, versus our actions – one might say planning and hoping against reality of doing.

There are only so many minutes in a day – and some of them really should be devoted to sleep. With good planning, it is possible to accomplish many things, both big and small, with the remaining minutes of your day. However, the more you did yesterday, the more you expect of yourself today. Even if your schedule is exactly the same as yesterday, pulling off the same non-stop act today is harder, because each day you accomplish it takes a away a bit of your energy reserve.

Yes, I know, if you have children there is no way to chip off any bits. Soccer, work, ballet, school, laundry, homework, dinner, ahhhh! You can’t let anything drop! But of course you will, after a month of it ,or so, you snap /crash / burn and then feel guilty about it.

I don’t have answers – especially as I never had kids – but I want you to think about how you can occasionally – maybe once a week, say no to the honey. The honey comes in many guises; Doing a little something extra to impress the boss, doing a little something extra so you feel like a better parent, doing a little something extra for the neighbour. Good deeds or not, sometimes its best to say ‘ not this week’.

I don’t have kids, or a job, and I still manage to do this to myself. “I have the time, right, I’m on disability, so I can do that.” Then one week down the line, I’m trying to balance my work load of five A&S projects, edits to my novel, and writing a short story, plus maintaining my social media connections – because I  like to, and because an indie author should be reaching out, connecting, publicizing….selling.

So what happens? I grind to a halt because there are so many things on my plate I can no longer even sort them out. I stare down, and see this pile which freezes me, due to its volume. It’s never the big things; spending a day helping a friend move, but the small things. Having to create twenty bead pendants by end of the month. I do five first day, then another five the next, then put them aside because I should / need to work on this chapter. And then, because there are so many little things, suddenly it is the day before I need the twenty pendants. Now I am stressed and having to make them all now! Then I become stressed about it and I’m messing them up, despite how easy they are. So now I start to worry, because I scheduled that evening for the carving I promised to do for a gift, and these stupid beads are messing my schedule up.

Planning would solve that you say? Yeah, it might, but planning doesn’t cover the sudden ‘must does’. Planning means you know every minute, and knowing you have five to spare on Wednesday, and thus saying you will bake cookies for the book club, and when little Sally keeps you up all night because she’s puking, because the red crayons really are not strawberries like her friend told her, and you have to catch up on sleep, but cookies so you just buy cookies, and then you feel horrible all through book club because ‘anyone can buy cookies’ ….

I’m rambling but that is exactly how it goes. Is there a solution? Maybe just say from the start, “I’ll buy some cookies, Oreo double stuff good?”

I need to learn to tell myself, ‘I’ll buy some Oreo’s‘ – accept that everything doesn’t need to be ‘Wow‘, or ‘above the norm‘. Sometimes it’s better to say, ‘Here is a pretty I bought you because I thought you’d like it’, than ‘I hand crafted each bead in this necklace, and sculpted the likeness of an Oreo in the pendant, because I know how much you love eating Oreo’s’.

All right – I don’t know if any of us learned anything from my ranting post today… except that we all start to get hungry if you mention Oreo’s enough times.